Bricklaying in Wimborne Minster

Lime repointing on solid walls. The older houses in the town centre, and the peak of Wimborne's stock is pre-1900 with 18.9 per cent of it built before 1919, are a single skin of soft handmade brick in lime mortar, built to let water in and let it back out through the joint.

We rake out by hand to roughly twice the joint width, never with a disc cutter, because on brick this soft a cutter widens the joint permanently and takes the arris off. Back in goes an NHL lime mix, with the sand chosen for colour and grain from what came out of the wall. The profile is matched to what the wall actually has, usually a flush or slightly recessed joint on a period front rather than the weather struck bevel that gets put on everything. You approve a cured sample panel on your own wall before we start.

Taking cement pointing back out. A great deal of Wimborne brickwork was repointed in the middle of the last century in a hard sand and cement mix. Because the joint is now stronger than the brick, water that used to leave through the mortar leaves through the brick face instead, and the face spalls off with the first hard frost. Removing it is slow, careful hand work, and it is the single most worthwhile job on a period front here. We do it elevation by elevation so you can spread it. Gauged and rubbed arches over the windows are the other thing that moves once a lintel behind them has gone or a sash box has rotted out, so we ease and repoint fine joints, needle and support where an arch has dropped, and cut out spalled brick one at a time in a matched handmade or reclaimed stock.

Above the gutter line is where the town's brickwork takes its punishment, and on a terrace the stack is often shared. We rebuild from below the damage, reuse sound brick, renew cracked flaunching and reset coping so it throws water clear of the wall instead of feeding it. A third of the homes in Wimborne, 33.9 per cent, are flats, and a lot of them are conversions where one elevation belongs to several people. We quote in a way a management company or a group of leaseholders can actually use: each elevation, each stack and the access on separate lines, so it can be split fairly and put out for comparison. Where the bill is going to leaseholders, the consultation under section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 has its own timetable, and it is far easier to plan the work around it than to discover it halfway. Behind the streets there are boundary and retaining walls holding back raised gardens on very little footing, in ground that shrinks and swells, so we rebuild bowed lengths off a proper base and tie gate piers in rather than leave them on the end of a wall.

We will not quote a rate per square metre. The wall area tells you little. Scaffold and pavement. A terrace front tight to the footway, a chimney stack shared with the house next door and a garden wall reached only through a hall are three different set ups. How long the platform stands matters as much as how big it is, and the work at height rules make it a priced line.

Lime or cement. Most of the old brick in the centre was laid in lime mortar. Where someone has since pointed it in hard cement, that cement has to be cut out carefully before lime goes back, and it is the slowest part of the job.

Matching brick. Replacing spalled bricks on an old front means finding reclaimed ones that match in size and colour. A modern house on the estates takes a stock brick off the shelf.

The ground. Much of the ground in Wimborne Minster is clay that shrinks in dry summers and swells in wet winters. A crack that opens and closes may be the ground, not the wall, and mortar will not fix that. We say so if we see it.

Ask any other quote what the mortar mix is, whether reclaimed brick is included, and whether the scaffold and licence are in the price.

We cover BH21 from Boscombe, 8.1 miles away: Wimborne Minster itself, Colehill, Merley, Corfe Mullen, Pamphill, Furzehill and Holt, all Dorset Council territory for planning and building control. The company you would contract with is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Wimborne Minster, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Thomas Hannen runs it, and he is the one who comes to see your wall and puts the price together. We hold a verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. Both the visit and the itemised written quote are free.

Most repairs in Wimborne Minster need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.