Hi there. The front of our house is rendered. A large chunk of the render seems to have blown in the last month or so. I’m guessing we have to bite the bullet and get the render removed and the bricks restored and repointed. Quite a few houses seem to have had pebbledash removed but it seems to vary in terms of time, method, mess and I imagine cost. Can anyone recommend any firms who do this?
Depending on the type of pointing that’ll need to be done to match the existing you’re looking at roughly £35 - 40 a m2 in London for raking out the bed and perp (perpendicular) joints and re-pointing. One thing I will point out is that a lot - if not all - of the housing stock in the area has been built using lime mortar. A mistake that can be made by whoever you get in to do it will rake the joints back 20 mil (industry standard for re-pointing) and re-point the brickwork with a sand and cement mortar when they should be doing it with a sand and lime mortar. They won’t knit together and once water gets behind the re-pointing it’ll eventually freeze and blow the re-pointing. An easy way to check if the existing brickwork was laid on a sand and lime mortar bed is to scratch it with your fingernail. If you can grind it down between your fingers alone then it’s lime mortar which should be re-pointed in the same. If it’s too hard to crumble then it should be re-pointed using a sand and cement mortar. Hope that helps.
Time-served bricklayer.
Upload some pictures of the existing brickwork and I’ll be able to advise you on which type of pointing will be needed to match the existing and what solutions you can use to clean the face of the previously peppledashed brickwork.
Sorry meant it’s hard to see the state of the pointing through the render!
Looks like Flemish bond peering through the painted brickwork which leads me to assume it’s been laid on a bed of lime mortar. The type of pointing looks like flush pointing.
Hi there. After a recommendation for Masonry brick repair works/ repointing companies please that have been used and as described, used the correct lime mortar etc. Thanks in advance.
We used these guys last year. They were extremely good. The quality of the work was great and they were nice guys, very hardworking, I’m very happy with the result. . http://uk-restoration.co.uk/
There’s also a house on Blythe lane - one of the big 3 story ones, that’s just had a huge amount of big brickwork done… again looks very well done and the company has a sign up.
Thanks so much. Curiously what mortar did they use? Will go for a wander down Blythe Lane.
Ah sorry the one that’s just been done is on Blythe hill, near the junction of Blythe hill lane though.
They used lime mortar on some of it, and some cement as well. I think we have the honour of being the hardest job they did last year…
To be clear - from the look of the photo you do not appear to have rendered brickwork. It looks like the masonry has been covered with a heavily textured paint. It may come off relatively easily.
Ours wasn’t pebbledash no… it was an 1980s application of very thick textured paint on top of a sand and cement mix. it was an absolute nightmare to remove. Pebbledash is much easier - you can just sand blast it…
Thanks so much for going to all this effort. I’ll certainly get in contact with both these companies. Thanks again 
