Repointing a terrace in Three Legged Cross

Seventies and eighties outer skins. Well over four in ten homes here date from between 1945 and 1982 and a further four in ten from after that, 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. A fifth of the homes here are terraced and another sixth are flats, which for a settlement this small is a great deal of unbroken brickwork. That changes how a job is planned rather than 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 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 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 rather than a tower, priced on its own line. With a quarter of the homes here single storey, plenty of walls come off a tower instead.

The rare old wall. Very little here 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.

No rate per square metre: the square metres tell you almost nothing until somebody has looked at the joints.

Getting to it. A mid terrace with neighbours either side, a detached bungalow with a stack on the ridge and a block of flats with one long communal elevation are three different set ups before a joint is opened. A chimney or gable wants a scaffold, a low wall a tower or nothing at all. How long the platform stands matters as much as how big it is, and the work at height rules make it a priced line.

The joints decide it, not the wall. Raking out by hand is slow, and on soft brick the only safe way, because a disc cutter widens the joint and takes the arris off. How deep the joints come back, and whether faces have already spalled, sets the hours far more than the area does. The mix matters as much: cement holds water against a soft brick and the face blows off in the first frost.

Comparing quotes? Ask how deep the joints are raked, by hand or by disc, what the mix is and whether it was matched, how many spalled bricks are cut out, and whether the scaffold is in. Two quotes for the same job are usually two different jobs.

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 two things are worth doing 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.

We cover Three Legged Cross, Verwood, West Moors, Alderholt and across to Ringwood and Wimborne, broadly BH21, under Dorset Council. You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building, the trading name of Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. Thomas Hannen's business, and he prices every job himself. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The site visit and the written quote are free.