Repointing in Bashley: the joint you see close up

Getting the finish right at eye height. A joint you can see from three feet away is judged on the colour of the mortar, the coarseness of the sand and the profile it is struck to. Most brickwork here is bucket handle or weather struck, and both throw a different shadow from a flush joint. We put back what the wall already carries, and make up a trial panel on a discreet face for you to look at in daylight.

Nineteen eighties and nineties brickwork. Nearly two in five homes in Bashley went up after 1983, the busiest years in the nineties. That is a hard, dense, machine made facing brick in a cement and sand mortar, and it does not fail the way a Victorian wall does. The mortar shrinks back at the arris, the perpends open before the bed joints, and the pointing parts from the brick and rings hollow while still looking solid. Matching means gauging the new mortar just under the strength of the brick.

The inter-war and pre-1919 end of Bashley. A useful share of the housing here is from between the wars or older, and that brickwork is softer, often laid in a mortar gauged with lime. On the oldest period properties there is no cavity: a solid wall, dry only while it stays breathable. Those get an NHL lime or lime putty mix matched to the original sand, raked by hand to roughly twice the joint width. A disc cutter or angle grinder widens the joint and takes the edge off the brick, so neither leaves the van on anything soft. Joints are damped down before filling and brushed back once the mix has taken up.

Chimney stacks and flaunching. The stack is the coldest, most exposed masonry on any house in Bashley and its mortar goes loose and friable years before the walls need touching. Open joints let water in, and it arrives as penetrating damp on a bedroom ceiling. We repoint the stack, cut out the frost damaged bricks and renew the flaunching around the pots. That is work at height, priced as its own line.

Spalled faces, cut out rather than filled. Where a face has blown we cut the brick out and turn or replace it against a sample. Spalling collects under sills, beside downpipes, at the corners of a bay and just above the damp proof course where a drive has been laid hard against the house.

Porches, garage returns and low front walls. The short lengths of brickwork either side of a garage opening, around a porch or along the front of a plot have no shelter and often a coping that has stopped doing its job. Water gets into the top, freezes and opens the joints from inside. Repointing the coping bed is a small job now and an awkward one later.

We never price by the square metre, because the area means very little until someone has looked at the joints. Getting to it. Nearly all of a single storey wall is within reach of a tower or trestles. A chalet bungalow with a dormer cheek is not, and a stack on the ridge needs scaffold whatever sits under it. How long the platform stands matters, and the work at height rules put it on its own line.

Depth and method. Raking by hand is slow. On soft brick it is the only safe way, since a disc will widen the joint and chip the arris. Joint depth and spalled faces set the hours far more than the area does.

The age of the wall. Most Bashley homes are late twentieth century, with harder bricks and cement mortar, so a matched mix suits them. The few cottages built before the First World War need lime, because cement holds water in soft brick until a frost pops the face off.

The colour. A nineties brick laid in a coloured mortar needs matching, or the repair shows from the road.

Ask competing quotes: how deep is the rake and is it by hand, is the mix matched to the old one, how many spalled bricks are allowed for, and is scaffold in.

We are about eight and a half miles from Bashley, at our base in Boscombe. We repoint houses, bungalows and outbuildings in Bashley, Wootton and Sway Road, and along to New Milton and Barton on Sea, with the National Park Authority deciding planning inside the Park boundary and New Forest District Council outside it.

Our company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, and it is owned by Thomas Hannen, who prices every job after looking at the wall himself. Checkatrade has a verified customer's 10 out of 10 on record for us. The site visit and the written, itemised quote cost nothing. Before you book a visit in Bashley, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Bashley 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.