Sandy, receding joints
Run a key along the joint. If it powders, the binder is gone. A joint worn back from the face has stopped shedding water and started catching it. This is the cheap stage of mortar repair.
Repoint soonBrick tuckpointing in Elmhurst & Chicagoland — since 1996
Crumbling mortar?Call
the Pros.
The mortar joint is designed to be the part that fails — the National Park Service calls it “sacrificial.”1 When it does, we grind it out to sound depth and put it back: matched to your original, tooled to disappear.
…or call (630) 833-3665 — a human picks up
Family-owned since 1996·Licensed Chicago mason contractor·5.0 on Angi·Warranty-backed work
Interactive · Wall W-01
Elmhurst two-flat
Glide your trowel over the crumbling joints
Nice trowel work.
Now imagine what a crew with 30 years of practice does to a whole house.
Get my free estimate
Mortar: type N · color-matched
Wall repointed: 0%
The evidence
Three reasons tuckpointing can't wait.
Not our opinion. Three facts, footnoted — from the National Park Service, the standard insurance policy form, and published repair bills.
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30year service life01 — the clock
Mortar is built to fail first. That's the design.
Mortar joints are intended to be sacrificial and will probably require repointing some time in the future.
National Park Service, Preservation Brief 21Soft mortar wears so hard brick doesn't. That's the deal — and it comes with a clock. A good repointing job “is meant to last, at least 30 years, and preferably 50-100 years.”1 The clock started the day the wall went up.
More than 39% of Chicago's housing was built in 1939 or earlier, against 21% across the region.3 The bungalow belt alone is roughly 80,000 brick homes from 1910–1940.2 If your brick has never been repointed, the original mortar is still doing a job it was designed to hand off decades ago.
Built 1925, never repointed? That's three service lives on one set of joints.
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$0covered02 — the bill
Worn mortar is “wear and tear.” The policy form has a line for that.
Policies are written for sudden accidents — the tree through the roof. A joint that eroded over forty winters isn't sudden and isn't an accident. On the standard policy form, that mortar repair lands in the exclusions.5
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Excluded
Deterioration
“Wear and tear, marring, deterioration.” Also “faulty, inadequate or defective… maintenance.”
Standard policy form (ISO HO-3)5 -
Excluded
The mold that follows
Generally not covered. Where it is, caps commonly run $1,000–$10,000, varying by company. A wall that re-wets every rain is how you get there: the EPA's drying window is 24–48 hours.13
Insurance Information Institute7 -
Excluded
The vermin that move in
“If rodents and insects chew on your house, your policy won't pay for the repairs.” And an open joint at grade is the door — the rodent-proof construction spec calls for brick joints filled with mortar.21
Texas Dept. of Insurance8
Homeowners insurance typically does not provide coverage for damages due to lack of maintenance from wear and tear.
State Farm, on its own website6On this one, you are the insurance company.
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Excluded
Deterioration
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8×the bill, worst case03 — the cascade
Mortar is the part you can replace. Brick isn't — not cheaply.
There is no substitute for proper filling of all mortar joints.
Brick Industry Association, Technical Notes 710Water gets into a brick wall at two main places: the joint, and the hairline where mortar meets brick.10 The National Park Service calls uncontrolled moisture “the most prevalent cause of deterioration” in older buildings.9 Both point at the same fix — mortar joint repair — and it's the one we sell.
Let the water run and the brick pays. It freezes inside the face, expands 9%,17 and pops it off — and a spalled brick can't be repointed. It gets cut out and replaced. Same ending if someone “fixes” the joints with mortar harder than the brick: NPS says the stress goes into the brick instead, “resulting in permanent damage to the masonry, such as cracking and spalling, that cannot be repaired easily.”1
$2,500 Repoint 100 sq ft of wall — Angi's top end48up to $20,000 Rebuild large sections once the brick goes — Angi's top end51Mortar is a maintenance bill. Brick is a construction bill.
Warning signs
Does your mortar look like this?
The National Park Service's own trigger list for repointing: disintegrating mortar, cracked joints, loose brick, damp walls, damaged plaster.1 Here's what that looks like from the sidewalk — plus what it turns into if you wait, and one thing that looks like a repair but isn't.
Cracks along the joints
A hairline between brick and mortar is the bond line letting go — one of the two main routes water takes into a brick wall.10 A crack that climbs the joints like a staircase may be something else: NPS lists settlement among the root causes repointing alone won't fix.1 Either way, we look before we point.
Get it assessedWhite, chalky stains
Efflorescence: salts carried out by water and left behind when it evaporates. The stain is a map of where water has been moving through your wall.78 Cosmetic in itself. The route isn't.
Find the sourceFlaking brick faces
Spalling: water froze inside the brick, expanded 9%,17 and popped the face off. A spalled brick can't be repointed — it gets replaced. Every winter adds a few more.
Act nowDamp wall, bubbling plaster
Damp walls and damaged plaster are on the NPS list of reasons to repoint.1 By the time water shows up inside, it's been running through the joints for a while.
Act nowA gray smear over old joints
Someone “tuckpointed” without grinding — a skim of hard cement over failed mortar. NPS says surface grouting “cannot substitute” for repointing,1 and mortar harder than the brick sends the stress into the brick.1
Redo it right
Show us your brick — estimates are free
Small fixes stay small. See how this one grows ›
The diagnosis
Where a wall fails, joint by joint.
A brick wall leaks mostly where brick meets mortar — at the joint and the hairline beside it.10 Here's the failure in five stops — four you don't want, and the one that fixes them.
Chart No. 1996-TCK Patient Your wall Presenting Crumbling joints Attending The Pros
Mortar is meant to be softer than the brick, so the joint wears first and the brick doesn't.1 That deal holds right up until the joint weathers back far enough to make a ledge. Now every rain sits in it instead of running off.
Chicago sits at or below freezing on roughly 120 days a year.18 Water in that ledge freezes and expands 9%,17 thaws, and refills from the next rain. Spring doesn't undo it. Each winter picks up where the last one left off.
The fix — cut it out and repoint to sound depth — never a skim coat over old mortar1The hairline between brick and mortar is the water's front door. The Brick Industry Association names two entry points in a brick wall — the joint and the bond line — which is why it says there is “no substitute for proper filling of all mortar joints.”10
You usually can't see it from the sidewalk. Rain can. A crack too thin for a business card still lets water in, and once it's inside, a wall dries a lot slower than it wets.
The fix — fill every joint, packed in lifts so the new mortar actually bonds to the brick1White, chalky stains. They need three things: soluble salts in the wall, water to dissolve them, and a path to the surface where the water evaporates.78 So the stain isn't the problem — it's the receipt. It marks exactly where water has been moving through the masonry.78
Scrub it off and it comes back, because the route is still open. Close the route and it stops. NPS is firm that the root cause of the water — a leaking roof or gutter, settlement, rising damp — gets dealt with before any repointing starts.1
The fix — find the route and close it — repoint the path, then let the stains fadeWater got inside the brick and froze. At 9% expansion,17 the face lost. A spalled brick can't be repointed; it gets cut out and replaced with a matched unit.
Two roads lead here. Leave a wet joint open long enough — or let someone repoint with mortar harder than the brick. NPS: a mortar stronger than the masonry “will not ‘give,’” so the stress is relieved through the brick instead, causing “cracking and spalling, that cannot be repaired easily.”1 That rock-hard gray patch job isn't a repair. It's a delay, with interest.
The fix — replace the brick, then repoint in a mortar softer than it1Old mortar comes out to a depth of 2 to 2½ times the joint width — about ½ to 1 inch on most brick — so the new mortar has something to grip and doesn't pop out.1 Vertical joints are cleared by hand; a grinder on a head joint chews the brick edge.1
Then it goes back in thin lifts, about ¼ inch at a time, each allowed to firm up before the next.1 The mortar is matched to the original in color, sand, and strength — softer than the brick, never harder1 — and tooled to the same profile. Done this way, NPS says, it should last at least 30 years, and preferably 50 to 100.1
The fix — exactly this, on the joints that need it — and not the ones that don't1The cascade
What putting off mortar repair actually costs.
Every job below starts the same way: water past a mortar joint. The only variable is how long it ran before someone closed it.
Maintenance — the part you choose
Consequence — the part you don't
The honest version: per square foot, the cost of tuckpointing isn't dramatically lower than the cost of replacing brick. The escalation is in what the water reaches next — brick faces, then framing, then the inside of the wall. Mortar is hundreds to a few thousand. Rot and mold are five figures, and none of it is the kind of sudden loss the standard policy form is written for.5
How it works
Look. Grind. Point.
STEP 1 / FREE
Look
A free on-site assessment, anywhere in Chicagoland. We walk every elevation, sound the joints, and mark what needs repointing now, what can wait, and what isn't a mortar problem at all — a bad gutter, a rusted lintel. Then we quote it straight, spot work first.
STEP 2
Grind
Failed mortar comes out to 2–2½ times the joint width — sound depth, not a scratch.1 Grinders rough out the bed joints; hand chisels finish them and clear every vertical, so the brick edges stay whole.1 Tarps down, dust controlled.
STEP 3
Point
Mortar matched to your original — color, sand, strength — and softer than the brick, never harder.1 Packed in lifts, tooled to your joint profile, cured right. Swept up daily and backed in writing.
What a tuckpointing job from the Pros includes
- Assessment of every elevation, free
- Mortar match — color, sand, and strength1
- Grinding to sound depth, 2–2½× the joint width1
- Hand-chiseled vertical joints1
- Spalled brick cut out and replaced with matched units
- Joints packed in lifts and tooled to profile
- Dust control and daily cleanup
- Warranty in writing
Straight answers
Tuckpointing questions, answered straight.
What's the difference between tuckpointing and repointing?
In Chicago, none — “tuckpointing” is the word everyone uses for cutting out failed mortar and replacing it. Strictly speaking, the National Park Service calls that repointing, and notes the term “tuck pointing” gets used for it “somewhat inaccurately”: true tuckpointing is a decorative raised joint laid over flush joints.1
Call it whatever you like. We do the real thing: grind out, repoint, match.
How much does tuckpointing cost?
Angi puts repointing at about $400–$2,500 per 100 square feet, averaging around $1,450.48 HomeGuide says roughly $5–$25 per square foot, with 20–40% more for work above 8 feet because that needs scaffolding.11 A chimney typically runs $500–$2,500.46 A whole two-story house is a different animal: $10,000–$50,000 by HomeAdvisor's estimate.49
Which is why we quote spot work first. NPS says it's preferable to repoint only the areas that need it, and that doing the whole wall may pay off once 25–50% or more of it needs work.1 Send a photo; we'll tell you which one you have.
When is the best time of year for tuckpointing in Chicago?
Spring through fall — tuckpointing season — when fresh mortar can cure without freezing. We watch the forecast, not the calendar. Chicago hits 32°F or below on roughly 120 days a year,18 so the working season has a hard end — and the joints still open in November spend the winter filling with water and ice.
If you noticed it this year, get it looked at this year. Small fixes stay small.
Can I do it myself — or can it just wait?
Can it wait? Sometimes, and we'll tell you if so. A sandy joint on a sheltered wall isn't an emergency. An open joint holding water heading into winter is a different thing; every freeze pries it wider.17
Can you do your own tuckpointing? The hard part isn't the trowel. It's grinding to the right depth — 2 to 2½ times the joint width1 — matching the mortar, and not using one harder than your brick. Mortar types run from about 75 psi to 2,500 psi,1 and NPS says picking a mortar stronger than the brick sends the stress into the brick and causes spalling that “cannot be repaired easily.”1 That's the mistake we get hired to undo. Send us a photo first. It's free.
Will the new mortar match, or will it look like a patch?
Honest answer, from NPS: even with the best matching, “there will usually be a visible difference between the old and new work” at first, because the new mortar is matched to the unweathered original.1 The trick is the sand — get the sand right and the color and texture “will usually fall into place”1 — and then letting it age rather than staining it.1
Within a few seasons a good repoint stops announcing itself. A bad one never does.
Someone quoted me a lot less. What's the catch?
Ask one question of any tuckpointing contractor: how deep are you cutting? A skim of new mortar smeared over old — surface grouting — is the cheap version, and NPS says it “cannot substitute” for repointing.1 A hard cement skim over soft brick is also the recipe for spalling.1
Real repointing is “both expensive and time consuming due to the extent of handwork and special materials required.”1 That isn't our sales pitch. It's the Department of the Interior explaining why the cheap quote is cheap.
Will tuckpointing fix the leak in my wall?
If the leak is the joint, yes — the Brick Industry Association says there's “no substitute for proper filling of all mortar joints.”10 But NPS is blunt that repointing alone won't cure water coming from somewhere else — a leaking gutter, settlement, rising damp — and that the root cause “should always be dealt with prior to beginning work.”1
So we look first. If your problem is a downspout, we'll say so. It's cheaper than us.
Free estimate
Show us your brick.
Send a photo of the worst joint you can find — one close-up and one from the sidewalk. We'll tell you what we see, in plain English, and quote it straight: spot work first. We handle tuckpointing across Elmhurst, Oak Park, Villa Park, Lombard, Hinsdale and the rest of Chicagoland.