Bricklayers & Repointing in the North East
Brickwork is the bread and butter round here. Most of the North East housing stock is solid brick or early cavity, a lot of it Victorian and Edwardian terraces built with soft handmade brick and lime mortar. That matters, because the wrong repair on an old wall does more harm than the crack you set out to fix.
We take on everything from a garden wall and a set of piers up to full extension shells, gable rebuilds and structural openings. Same lads on your job start to finish, so you are not getting a different face every morning.
What we take on
- Extension and new build shells, cavity and solid wall
- Garden walls, boundary walls, piers and copings
- Gable end repairs and full gable rebuilds
- Repointing in lime or sand and cement, matched to the wall
- Crack stitching with helical bars and remedial wall ties
- Structural openings, lintels, padstones and making good
- Reclaimed brick matching for repairs on older property
How we do it
Look at it properly
We come out and read the wall. Cracking pattern, mortar type, whether it is movement or just weathering. You get told what is actually wrong, not what is easiest to sell.
Written quote
Itemised so you can see materials, labour, access and skip. No day rate creep halfway through.
Set up and protect
Scaffold or tower where it is needed, sheets down, and we keep the path clear because we still have to walk past your neighbours.
Build it
Correct mortar mix for the brick, proper gauge, joints struck to match the existing. Bricks banded out of two or three packs so you do not get patchy colour.
Clean up
Site swept, waste away, brickwork brushed off. We do not leave a heap of sand behind for you to shift.
What it tends to cost
A garden wall runs on metre rate and height. Repointing is priced per square metre and depends heavily on how much of the old joint has to be raked out first. Gable repairs vary wildly because scaffold and the extent of tie failure drive the price more than the brickwork does. We give you a fixed figure after we have seen it, not a guess over the phone.
Questions we get asked
Should my old house be repointed in lime or cement?
If the brick is soft and the original mortar is lime, it wants lime. Cement is harder than the brick, so moisture that used to escape through the joint gets forced out through the face of the brick instead, and the face blows off in frost. On a solid Victorian terrace round Byker or Heaton, that is a hydraulic lime, typically NHL 3.5. On a 1970s cavity wall, sand and cement is perfectly fine.
My gable has horizontal cracks every few courses. Is that serious?
Horizontal cracking following the bed joints at regular intervals, usually about every sixth or ninth course, is the classic sign of cavity wall tie failure. The old galvanised ties rust, rust expands, and it jacks the outer leaf up. It is not subsidence and it is not going to fall down tomorrow, but it does need remedial ties before the wall starts to bow. Diagonal or stepped cracking that gets wider at the top is a different conversation.
Can you match the brick on a Victorian terrace?
Usually yes, with reclaimed. New brick almost never matches an old wall because a hundred and twenty years of weather changes the colour. We source reclaimed of the right size, since old imperial brick is a different dimension to modern metric, and that mismatch is what makes a bad repair obvious from the street.
Where we cover for brickwork & pointing
Other trades we cover
Want a price on brickwork & pointing?
Send a few details or give us a ring. We will come and look at it, and you get a written price with no obligation attached.