Masonry restoration in Bonita Springs FL - sound joints, brick faces left intact

Most calls start with a wall that just looks tired, with sand on the ground under it, joints sunk back from the brick face or a patch somebody smeared on years ago. If some bricks are cracked or broken too, that's brick repair on top of the repointing, and we usually handle both in the same job. The price moves with how many square feet need work, how deep the joints are worn, how high the wall runs and whether it needs cleaning first. The schedule turns on the size of the wall and on whether your job needs a permit before we can start. I come out, look at the wall and write you an estimate with your own figure on it.

I start by walking the wall with you and showing you which joints are gone and which are fine. We clean with water and soft brushes before anything stronger, because blasting takes the face off old brick and it doesn't grow back. Then we rake the worn mortar out down to solid material, so the new mortar has something sound to grab. The mortar we pick is softer than the brick, so over the years the joints take the wear and the brick doesn't. We pack the joints in layers, shape them to match the rest of the wall and clean the brick face before we leave.

Restoration often turns up other work around the house. An old fireplace surround with failing joints is sometimes worth rebuilding instead of patching, and we take that on as fireplace installation. Where a wall's face is too worn to look right even after repointing, stone veneer installation gives it a new face, and I'll tell you which of the two actually makes sense.

Building permits in Bonita Springs go through the city's Building Department, and whether a repointing job needs one is the city's call, not mine. When a job needs a permit, we check with the city or county office for your address and file it ourselves, which matters because we're based in Bonita Springs and work north into Lee County and south into Collier County, and the office changes with the address. Any contractor pulling permits in the city has to register with the Building Department, which asks for an active state license where one is required and proof of liability insurance. On the city's residential application, any job over $5,000 needs a copy of a recorded NOC before the first inspection, and the city can tell you what that form involves. The application also has the owner state that no work started before the permit was issued, so we keep you posted and start only once it's in hand.

On jobs around here we see a lot of brick garden walls, columns and planters sitting in the spray from irrigation, with white powder showing up on them. That powder is salt the water leaves behind, and on the surface it's usually harmless, but salt drying inside a brick can make the face flake off, so we look at where the water's coming from before we repoint. We see the same thing on jobs in Estero and Naples.