Repointing is a moderately messy job: grinding out old mortar joints produces mortar dust and small chips of debris, and fresh mortar can smear if it's not handled carefully. A crew that knows what it's doing protects the work area with tarps and drop cloths and cleans up as they go, so the mess stays contained rather than spreading across the yard or into the house.
The dust comes from grinding out the old, failed mortar with a tuckpointing grinder before packing in new mortar, and that step throws off fine masonry dust along with chips of the old joint material. It settles fast and stays fairly local to the work area, but nearby windows, cars, and plants near the wall or chimney base benefit from being covered or moved before the grinding starts.
Chelo's Brick & Stone tarps off the ground below the work, covers plants and fixtures close to the wall, and sweeps up mortar debris at the end of each day rather than leaving it to pile up. Any leftover mortar smears on the brick face get cleaned off before the joint fully sets, since dried mortar haze is much harder to remove later. By the time the job wraps, the site gets a final cleanup pass.
The mess is also short-lived rather than something that lingers for the length of a bigger project, since repointing is worked joint by joint and cleaned as the crew moves rather than left for one big cleanup at the very end. Someone walking the yard the evening after a day of repointing typically sees swept surfaces and covered plants still in place, not a work site left in disarray until the whole job is finished. Bigger repointing jobs that run several days follow the same pattern day after day, so the mess never accumulates past what a normal end-of-day cleanup handles.
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Chelo's Brick & Stone serves Hillsville, Galax, Wytheville, Fancy Gap, and Independence, VA. Call for a straight answer and a free on-site estimate.
