LESLIE: Jennifer in Pennsylvania, you’re on the line. What can we do for you?
JENNIFER: I’m calling about my home. My bricks need pointing. And I want tips on how to best do it; if there’s some new material on the market.
TOM: How old is your house, Jennifer?
JENNIFER: Oh, our house is about 70 years old.
TOM: Wow. Well, they’re due. Well, repointing is a project that’s probably best left up to a pro. And what they’re going to do is they’re going to scrape out all of the old, soft mortar between the joints. Of course, we’re talking about repointing. Repointing means to replace the mortar between the bricks; for those folks that are not familiar with it. And it’s a mortar mix that’s made. It usually has a little more lime than what you might put in it if you were building a wall out of bricks because it makes it a little stickier. And then, very carefully, they’re going to repoint or place mortar in between those bricks. They’re going to score it so it seals properly against the top and the bottom of the brick. It’s got to be just the right consistency so it’s easy to handle. And once it’s done, it’ll look like a whole brand new house.
JENNIFER: What’s the average cost for it?
TOM: Well, that’s hard to say because it’s very labor intensive; though – now this is a situation where you have to do the whole house or are there just some areas that are worse than others?
JENNIFER: There are areas where it’s more – where more work is needed than others.
TOM: Yeah. Well, you might want to think about just doing the worst areas. But get some numbers on doing the whole house because it is quite a big job. It’s a lot of labor involved. OK, Jennifer?
JENNIFER: OK.
TOM: Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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