Repointing rubble stone and brick in West Lulworth

Rubble stone is bedded in lime. Much of older West Lulworth is rubble stone with brick used at the quoins, over the window heads and in the chimneys, and every bit of it was bedded in lime because lime is the part that is meant to give.

Behind the face a West Lulworth wall is solid throughout, with no cavity anywhere in it. The beds in a rubble wall are deep, wide and irregular, so we rake by hand back to sound mortar rather than to a set depth, and neither a disc cutter nor an angle grinder goes near it. The joint is damped down and then filled in lifts, each one pressed in and left to take up before the next, because a deep void filled in one go shrinks, cracks and drops out inside a year.

The brick that runs through it. Quoins, window heads, arches and stacks in West Lulworth are brick, not stone, and they are usually laid in a finer mortar with a narrower joint. Pointing them at the width and the strength that suits the rubble around them loses the detail and reads badly from the road. We specify those separately and say so on the quote, usually an NHL lime or a lime putty gauged finer than the rubble mix, and struck to whatever profile the brickwork already carries: flush, recessed, weather struck or bucket handle.

Taking hard cement back off. Where somebody has pointed a West Lulworth wall in sand and cement the damage shows in the masonry rather than the joint. The wall cannot dry through a sealed joint, so it dries through the stone and the fired brick instead, and the face shells off. The tell is spalling faces under a joint that has gone crumbling and friable at its edges, and penetrating damp showing on the inside of the same wall. Cutting a cement joint out of soft rubble without taking stone with it is patient work with hand tools and it is priced on hours, not area.

Boundary walls, which take more than the house does. There are a great many of them in West Lulworth, and they are wet from both faces with no roof over them. The coping is what saves one, so a loose or missing coping stone gets rebedded before anything else, off a tower where the wall is low enough, and then both faces are pointed rather than the side you can see from the road. Half a wall pointed is a wall still taking water from behind.

Faces that have already blown. A West Lulworth brick that has lost its face comes out whole and a matched replacement goes in, sourced against a sample held on the wall. Filling the hollow with mortar leaves a patch that never matches and is out again in two winters. On stone it is the same principle: replace or turn the unit rather than model a new face in mortar.

Stacks. A West Lulworth stack takes weather from every side with nothing warming it, so its joints run years ahead of the walls below. Raking and repointing above the roof line, renewing the flaunching that beds the pots and making good the top courses is scaffold work and it is a priced line of its own rather than something added at the end.

How far back the joints have gone. Shallow wear takes a light rake. Joints washed back deep on the south west face, where the weather off the sea hits hardest, need more raking out and packing before the finishing coat goes in.

What the mortar should be. Lime mortar is slower to mix, slower to lay and needs protecting for longer while it cures. It is the right choice on most older stone and brick here. Cement is quicker and cheaper, and the wrong choice on soft material.

The face of the wall. Spalled bricks and broken stone faces need cutting out and replacing, and matching them is part of the cost. Most old walls have some; Thomas tells you how many he can see.

Height and where the platform stands. A chimney stack or a gable takes scaffold. A boundary wall does not. Work at height rules make the platform a priced line, and the lanes decide where it can go.

Before choosing a firm, ask: what depth are the joints raked to, and by hand or disc? What mix, and was it matched to what is there? Are replacement bricks or stones counted in the figure?

From Boscombe to West Lulworth is 19.4 miles. We cover the village, East Lulworth, Winfrith Newburgh, Wool and over to Wareham, mostly BH20, and Dorset Council is the planning authority. The firm is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, company number 15471719, registered in England and Wales. Before you book a visit in West Lulworth, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Thomas Hannen owns it and prices every repointing job in person once he has looked at the joints. We hold a verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. There is no charge for coming out, and none for the written quote laid out line by line.

Most repairs in West Lulworth 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.