Repointing a terrace in Three Legged Cross

Seventies and eighties outer skins. Nearly every home in Three Legged Cross dates from after 1945, so nearly everything is cavity work: one skin of fired brick in cement and sand, weather struck or bucket handle. Mortar of that age does not wash out the way a soft old joint does.

It pits and opens at the arris, water stands in the hollow, and one hard frost takes flakes off the brick either side. Matching means matching the sand and the gauge as well as the colour, so a trial panel goes up somewhere discreet and you judge it in daylight first.

Terraces and shared elevations. There are terraces and flats in Three Legged Cross too, which for a settlement this small is a great deal of unbroken brickwork. That changes how a job is planned, not how it is done. We decide where a day's pointing stops without leaving a visible line, usually at a downpipe or the party line, and keep one person striking a given elevation so the profile does not drift. Where the building is flats, the external walls belong to the block and the freeholder instructs the work.

Raking out, filling and finishing. Joints come back to twice their width, perpends by hand. A disc cutter is quick along a bed joint and also how a wall ends up with widened perpends and its arrises taken off, so it stays in the van on anything soft. Joints are damped down before filling so the mix cures rather than flashing off, then brushed back once the mortar has taken up and been struck to the profile the wall already carries.

Blown brick faces. A spalled face on a Three Legged Cross wall is cut out whole and the brick turned or replaced against a sample held on the wall rather than filled with mortar, which never matches the colour or texture. Frost damage collects under sills, beside downpipes and just above the damp proof course where a drive has been built up against the house.

Stacks and anything at height. A chimney in Three Legged Cross has weather on four sides and nothing warming it, so its joints go loose and friable years ahead of the walls below and the penetrating damp shows on a top floor ceiling. Stacks want a scaffold, not a tower, priced on its own line. Bungalows are common here, so plenty of walls come off a tower instead.

The rare old wall. Very little in Three Legged Cross predates 1919, but where a building is solid wall rather than cavity the answer changes: an NHL lime or lime putty mix matched to the original sand, so the wall stays breathable and keeps its route for losing water. A hard modern mix on a soft old wall is the quickest way to lose the brick faces.

We never price by the square metre, because until someone has scraped the joints, the area of the wall says very little. Which faces. A gable end facing the weather, a chimney stack and the lower courses by a drive are usually the worst.

Doing one elevation is a different job from the whole house. On a bungalow we work from a tower. Chimneys and two storey gables take scaffolding, a separate line because of the work at height rules. A block of flats with one long wall is a bigger set up again.

How far back the joints have gone. Shallow weathering is quick. Joints that have eroded deep, or that someone has already patched with a thin smear of cement, take much longer to rake out properly, and that is where the hours are.

The mortar. On modern facing brick a cement and sand mix is normal. On the few older cottages in Three Legged Cross a softer lime mortar may be right, because a hard mix traps water in a soft brick and the face spalls in frost.

Spalled bricks. Each one cut out and replaced adds time, and matching is part of it.

Worth asking anyone else: how deep will the joints be raked, is it by hand or disc, and what mix is going in.

For a settlement of this size there is an unusual amount of continuous frontage at Three Legged Cross, between the terraced housing and the flats. That matters for repointing in a way it does not on a detached house, because the wall does not stop at your boundary.

A mortar mixed a shade greyer, or a joint struck a few millimetres deeper, carries straight on to the next front door and reads from the pavement as a line down the brickwork.

None of that means waiting for anybody. It does mean a little groundwork first. Take the mortar sample from your own elevation rather than from a repair somebody else has made, so you match the original instead of copying a mismatch. And if a neighbour is likely to point their half in the next few years, tell them what mix and profile you have settled on. It costs nothing now and saves an argument later, which is why we write both into the quote.

From our base in Boscombe it is about nine miles to Three Legged Cross, and we also cover Verwood, West Moors, Alderholt and the roads towards Ringwood. Dorset Council is the council for all of it.

Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, is run by its owner, Thomas Hannen. Thomas scrapes the joints and prices the work himself. One verified customer rated us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. Both the visit and the written quote, itemised line by line, are free. Before you book a visit in Three Legged Cross, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Three Legged Cross 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.