Saving your stonework when others fall short.
Saving your stonework when others fall short.
The Ghost of Mortar Past I once walked up to a 1912 Tudor Revival where the homeowner was near tears. She had hired a ‘masonry expert’ who treated her historic facade like a common sidewalk. He had ground out the original, buttery lime joints and replaced them with a harsh, slate-gray Portland-heavy mix. Within two […]
The Ghost in the Wall: Why Forensic Mortar Analysis is Your Building’s Only Hope The homeowner thought it was just a hairline crack. But when I put my scope inside that 1920s facade, I saw the structural steel was rusted to dust, expanded to three times its original size, and was literally exploding the brickwork […]
The Ghost in the Wall: Why Your Facade is Faltering I remember a project in the historic district where a homeowner called me out because his 1890s brickwork looked like it was ‘melting.’ He’d hired a handyman the year before to patch a few spots. That handyman, bless his heart, used modern Type S Portland […]
The Ghost in the Wall: Why Traditional Restoration is Failing I remember a job in a historic district where a young contractor had just finished ‘fixing’ a 1910 brownstone. From thirty feet away, it looked clean. But as I got closer, I could hear the building screaming. He had used a high-speed diamond blade without […]
The Forensic Reality: A Boroscope Into the Void I recently stood before a 1914 Flemish bond facade that looked, from the sidewalk, like a reasonably well-maintained piece of history. The homeowner had been told by a cut-rate contractor that the ‘hairline’ cracks were just settling. I didn’t buy it. I pulled out my boroscope and […]
The Forensic Scene: Beneath the Surface of a Failing Facade The developer thought it was just a hairline crack, a minor blemish on a century-old industrial warehouse. He called it an ‘aesthetic touch-up.’ But when I climbed that forty-foot lift and put my borescope into the cavity, I didn’t see solid masonry. I saw a […]
The Deception of the Surface: A Forensic Reality Check The homeowner thought it was just a hairline crack. But when I put my scope inside that cavity wall on a 12-story commercial loft in the West End, I saw the structural steel was rusted to dust. The ‘orange rot’ had claimed the lintels because the […]
The Ghost of the Facade: Why Your Repointing is Failing I recently walked past a 1920s Tudor in the city where the homeowner had clearly hired a ‘weekend warrior’ to fix some weathered joints. From twenty feet away, it looked like a gray spiderweb had been vomited onto the beautiful crimson clay. Up close, it […]
The Forensic Scene: When a Hairline Crack Becomes a Structural Grave The homeowner called me out for what they thought was a routine stone balustrade restoration. From the curb, the facade looked decent, but as I climbed the scaffolding and put my borescope into a quarter-inch gap, I saw the skeleton of the building was […]
The Forensic Scene: When the Wall Whispers I was called out to an old industrial conversion where the homeowner thought they just had a bit of a cleaning problem. Every morning, a fine, tan powder would settle on the floor along the baseboards. They’d sweep it up; the next day, it was back. They thought […]
