Repointing a Stone Wall with Lime Mortar

do right this morning's job is to start on the mortar on the wall so this west facing gable end is all being repointed with cement mortar which is not ideal for a natural stone wall so what we've done is started picking out all of this cement kind of strapping that's basically just been pointed over the top of the line which is trapping a lot of the moisture and causing issues with the stone what i'm thinking is we can go down to the scaffold level and we'll do that now and then perhaps leave it until spring when the weather is a little bit better and then i'll use the tower scaffolding to do the section below there's quite a lot to do down there but we're not really going to have a chance to get up here again thankfully you can see how easy it comes off because actually it wasn't a very good job the first time around when someone repointed it which is a good thing for us if someone had done a really thorough job here they would have raked out 25 30 mil or more and then stuffed it full of cement mortar we'd be really struggling if that was the case whereas a lot of the time it's just buttered over the top of the lime so it actually doesn't hold very well at all and if we look over the wall much of this you can just pry out with your fingers so we can chip off lightly with the sds we're not really damaging the stone because we're just giving it a little tickle they fall off and then we're just raking out a bit of the lime water back to about 25 mil to give us plenty of space for the new stuff [Music] so i managed to find somewhere fairly local just down in somerset where they make up lime mortars and a lot of them match our local areas so this one in particular is a white lion mix called w20 and it's going to match what we've got here which is a fairly light mortar mix but it's also got black flecks in and those black flecks are bits from the coal mines around here whether it's coal itself or slag or something like that which helps in how it hardens it's called a potcillin i think um so this is being replaced by something very similar in color i think it's an ash of some sort we're about 25 mil maybe a little bit more in depth and we've brushed out those joints now i'm going to wet it all down it's not going to be overly hot because it's november and fortunately the wind isn't too strong i think if you get too much wind that can dry it out too quick as well but we can put some sheets up if we need to right the main priority today is just get a feel for working with the lime and see how far one bag goes live mortar like this is just made up ready the ratios are ready and it's just in a bag all we really need to do is just knock it up and by that just mix it mix it and mix it until we've got it the consistency we want we don't want to be adding too much if any water to this all right we'll take a look at it close up before we mix it so you can see i mean it's it's a similar color now to the dampened lime behind me and you can make out in there those bits of black and a few bits of the sort of lions color which hopefully should tie into this so he did tell me that it's gonna feel almost like it's gone off in the back um especially because we've got that black the black sort of um ash or porcelain or whatever it is in there it's not going to say super soft in the bag but as soon as we start beating it up it's going to go soft again without adding water that was key do not add water so we probably need to go and find a better bucket but for now we'll just do a little batch just see what happens wow it's actually quite super soft i promise you i have not added any water at all i've just literally mixed it for a minute and it's gone really really soft compare it to a chunk that came out of the bag which is crumbly and hard we just backed a nice supple mortar cool so i was intending to use a pointing trowel but after speaking to joe he mentioned these little spatulas and he said this is the way to go probably because we're going to be more precise with it and not get it on the face of the stone um but apart from that i think we're ready to go like i said this is just a really short term temporary setup i will be uh better better prepared for the next time around gloves you it's not good stuff and i probably need to have some proper waterproof gloves all the way around or get some marigolds on [Music] it's actually going in much better than i thought it would you can be really precise with this and not get any on the stone so that's um that's going well it's obviously easier to do the horizontal joints than it is to do the perpendicular joints but i just work my way i don't think i think it's one of those things you can't really rush but i do feel like we're going to use quite a lot more than i thought um we might have to get a pallet worth of bags for this the key is really to as well as dampening the old lime is just really we've got to force it right back in and then we don't need it to look pretty we just want to come out a little bit further so we're kind of flush with the stone and then it's going to be a good day or two before we need to come back in tidy it up and knock it back and brush it up so we've got a little bit more time to play with it than we would if we were using cement [Music] [Music] all right it's going pretty well so far i haven't quite worked out exactly how far we've got but at some point we will need to do that so i can order the new stuff but it's going in really nicely it actually becomes quite sticky the more you mix it so it doesn't really fall out like some mortars if you you know let it go too dry already the first bit we put in about an hour and a half ago is firming up nicely so it might be that we get around to brushing it today if not tomorrow it's been a little bit more awkward because you've got all of the barge board and the trim to get into when we get further this way it should be a bit easier [Music] well this is how we're looking it's a bit gloomy and dark now um but this is the final finished section for today by tomorrow this will have firmed up enough to start brushing it back really getting it nice and firmed up and uh cleaned up i've kept off as much as possible off the face of the stone because that's when we start staining or getting that white milky look over the stone and we don't want that these are a little bit more forgiving than if you're doing it on red brick yeah from first look it looks a little bit cement colored but actually by the time that this dries back it'll be much more this sort of white or lighter cream flecked color so we'll start seeing a little bit more of the aggregate and the bits bits and pieces that are in the mortar when we start knocking about brushing it back i now need to measure up this triangle that i've done and work out that's basically one bag who's done i'm guessing two square meters maybe a little bit less and now we need to approximate how much we need to order tonight and then we can get this whole section done i can't find my uh my old churn brush so i've got a fairly stiff brush but hopefully this will just give us an idea of how it's going to finish up there we go i'm not gonna risk taking any more off because if it's too soft we're ending up dragging it onto the face of the stone but the little section that was nice and firm you can see now we're starting to see some of the aggregate come through some of the black flecks and everything that we wanted to see so this is firming up enough but there is a test section hopefully that's going to dry down into a lighter color the next section to do once we've got the more lime on site is another section up to this window surround the window is okay as far as the joins it's just where the stonework meets it that we need to sort and then we need to do this side now this side is all now prepped uh just needs to be dampened down a little bit before we point it up so that's probably a day in itself once we've got everything here and then unfortunately our heroic titan sts is taking a dive still works in drill mode but lost all hammer function which is quite important like i said earlier we'll do a whole in-depth video covering the whole end of this wall uh in a in a week or so and ideally some more info which i can share or even get down to line base at some point and have a chat with the guys down there [Music] [Music] [Music] anyway for now our wall is one step closer to being back how it should be which is lime breathable and how it was built any of the tools and gear i used i will stick down in the description especially this little gem which was just perfect for pointing up the wall um but that will be down in the description along with a link to our christmas goodies some of the gifts and products we've now got on our website but thank you for watching remember if you can do it yourself and we'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: The Restoration Couple

Views: 70,428

Rating: 4.9507132 out of 5

Keywords: renovation, restoration, DIY, Do it yourself, how to, home improvement, reclaimed, projects, woodworking, maker, lime mortar, repointing with lime, breathable stone wall, lime pointing, stonework, solid wall

Id: go2nGMss7R4

Length: 13min 26sec (806 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 17 2020