Tuckpointing & Masonry Repair in Mount Prospect

Mount Prospect has some of the most consistent postwar brick housing in the northwest suburbs. Ranches and split-levels built largely in the 1950s and 60s, with full brick or brick-front elevations.

Because the stock is so consistent, so are the problems. Three things come up on nearly every Mount Prospect house we look at.

Mortar at age. Sixty to seventy years is past due in this climate, particularly on south and west elevations.

Rusted lintels. The steel angles above the front windows on these houses were painted steel, usually with no flashing above them. Paint fails, water sits on the steel, and the steel corrodes and expands to several times its original thickness. That force lifts the brick course above the window. The giveaway is a rust stain running down from a window corner and a horizontal crack in the joint above the opening. Caught early, it is a contained repair. Left for another decade, there is a lot more brick to rebuild along with it.

Chimney crowns. Almost all of these chimneys were finished with a thin mortar wash rather than a proper poured crown with an overhang and drip edge, and those crack within a decade or so.