Stairs Before

Brick Questions

I have never done any tuckpointing before (or brick-work of any type for that matter), but the house is in need.

inside the garage, where hte bricks above the door are literally falling out.

inside wall of garage. The mortar around these bricks is basically powder, and you can move these bricks easily by hand.

At the base of the chimney outside the house, where some of the mortar is gone all the way through the first course of bricks.

I am thinking I'll start in the garage, which hopefully will help me learn how to do this in an area where looks don't matter, but I'd also like to patch up the outside areas on the house that are the worst (fortunately, there is not a lot to be done on the exterior of the house.).

Suggestions for me as I learn this? Any books/websites, etc to get me started? Tips?

Chimney Question

There is nothing but a steel mesh covering my chimneys (there are two coming out of this chimney, one for each fireplace). Do I need a coveron these?? I noticed about half of my neighbors don't have any caps on theirs either. There is a 2nd chimney on the house that is a where the water heater vents to, and it doesn't have a cap either.

2nd chimney question... the cement cap? around the top of the brick area has crumbled away to almost nothing. What type of cement do I use to form this back up?

Painting Prep

Yesterday, I pressure-washed the house, which had a lot of flaking and peeling paint on it. The pics below are post washing.


Under one of the eves... you can see the dark spot in the middle where the wood has rotted away. What do I use to fill this in?

See where the glazing has broken away on this window? Any tricks to fixing this? THis is not a window that would be easily removed.

This is a common occurance on most of the windows... cracked paint all over. What's the best way to deal with this? On one hand, I don't want to "mickey mouse" this, but at the same time, I'm not looking to do a window restoration, either.

Just a pic showing the side of the house after pressure washing. I just did a lead paint test, which showed up negative, so I am going to sand down the rough edges, spray it down again, then start priming.

ANY TIPS as I embark on this project?????

Starting Our Old House Blog

It is year 4 of ownership of our old home, and it's time to paint. This and multiple other projects, as always, bring up a lot of questions, so I decided to use this blog as a place to post pics and get suggestions.