Repointing / Exposing interior Brick

[Banksy 10]

Hi All,

Currently exposing the fireplace and adjacent brick walls. The old gas fire place and surrounding bricks have been removed to reveal the old fireplace and brick lintel. I'm now a little worried about the next phase.

 

Firstly what is the best way to apply acid to wash the brick and bring out the colour and second what is the safest way to repoint.

 

It looks to me like there is not much mortar in places so am scared to rake out the joints too much as that may affect stability? Prob being paranoid.

 

There is also quite a bit of blush cracking on the surface of some of the brick - some ppl would say this is a nice feature - just wondering whether this may be a sign of spooling.

 

The mortar is lime mix I think and dark grey in nature what kind of mortar would be best to repoint with to get a nice authentic looking finish?

 

The plan is to manually repoint rather than using power tools as the brick looks to fragile. A longer task but one that I'm happy to have a go at.

 

May well need to get the pros in to properly repoint.

 

Cheers for your advice in advance

[dorberman 10]

IAN HODGSON

BUILDING CONTRACTOR

35,ROKEBY DRIVE

SHEFFIELD S5 9JT

TEL-01142450327/07930564977

IANDHODGSON@AOL.COM

 

Brush off all loose debris(old mortar/plaster/whatever) then apply brick acid watered down ratio 1/1 with a hardish hand brush then rinse off with clean water.

if you can grind out with a grinder then do so.the brickwork will be Stable.about 10-20mm

Then repoint using a 6:1 grey building sand/cement.If you want to add lime you can but it is not neccessary.

I would use a flush method of pointing.ie bagged up

[Banksy 10]

thanks dorberman - all debris / plaster etc has been removed with wire brush and scraper etc so ready for the acid application.

 

The lime mortar will fizz with the acid I guess due to the reaction of HCl with it. Have heard that using cement mortar may not be the best way to do it and potentially cause damp issues ... and also with it being in the chimney there will be quite a bit of thermal variation so bricks will expand which the lime mortar will allow but cement not.

 

Is this not the case?

 

Would you grind out all the joints all at once or work in patches? On some joints it looks like the mortar doesn't even exist beyond the front 10-20mm :-)