Victorian garden wall lime mortar repoint and pillar cap repair
Built in the Victorian era this lovely chunky old front garden wall and pillar caps had seen better days. The wall had vegetation growing out of it and in places the mortar consisted of a previous bad cement repoint, no mortar or soil. The pillar caps had deep cracks and needed a proper repair and fresh repaint. Before the work took place you could actually push the wall and see it move. This needed more than just a standard repointing it needed to be repaired in stages.
To start with the wall was given a sympathetic light wash and clean. The cement mortar ground out and ingressed soil and vegetation removed. When it came to repointing it was done in stages filing the deeper voids a little at a time giving each time to go off before reapplying the next. Alongside the repointing we had to replace a few bricks and rebuild the area around the water gully. Brick replacement was kept to a minimum by turning bricks to retain the lovely colours and characteristics of the original wall.
The pillar caps, one in particular needed taking back to a solid base and rebuilt in stages using the appropriate materials and then both were finished with 3 coats of high quality paint.
This was a lovely little project to work on and the work has had many lovely passing comments.