I was setting a bluestone landing for a client in Great Kills last fall when I noticed the brick on the side of her house was quietly telling a story. The mortar between the courses had eroded back so far I could have laid a pencil in the joints. She had no idea — from ten feet away the wall looked fine. That’s the thing about repointing: by the time it’s obvious, you’ve usually let it go a few years too long.
My name’s Tom Reilly. I’ve spent the better part of 18 years doing brick, block, and stone work up and down Staten Island, and jobs like that one in Great Kills are a big part of why I bother writing this stuff down. Repointing — some folks call it tuckpointing, same job either way — means raking out the old, failed mortar between bricks and packing in fresh mortar to match. It isn’t cosmetic. The joints are what keep water out and hold the wall together, and once they fail, the brick itself starts paying the price.
The four signs I check on every brick wall
When I walk a property, I’m running through the same short list every time. Here’s what each one looks like and what it actually means for the wall.
| Sign | What you’ll see or feel | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Eroded joints | Drag a key or flat screwdriver along the joint — sound mortar resists, failing mortar crumbles to sand and dust | If the joint sits more than about a quarter inch behind the brick face, water is pooling there and soaking in |
| Grit at the base | A small pile of sandy grit on the sill or at the foot of the wall | Healthy mortar doesn’t shed — this is the binder breaking down |
| Spalling brick | The face of the brick pops, flakes, or crumbles off | Water got behind the face, froze, and pushed it off — the brick has to be cut out and replaced, not repointed |
| Efflorescence | A chalky white haze on the brick, sometimes with damp patches or bubbling paint on an interior wall | Water is moving through the masonry and carrying salts to the surface |
The joints that fail first are the ones that take the worst weather: south and west faces, chimney tops, and anywhere near grade where splashback hits. On Staten Island’s coast, that moisture carries salt, and salt-laden water soaking into old mortar speeds the whole process up.
Spalling means you waited past the easy fix
This is the expensive sign, and it means you’re past simple mortar repair. Once a brick face spalls it cannot be repointed back to health — it has to be cut out and replaced, brick by brick if needed. Staten Island gets enough freeze-thaw cycling over a winter that I see this regularly on homes where the pointing was neglected for years, especially on chimneys, where chimney repointing is usually needed before anywhere else on the house. Catch eroded joints early and you’re doing preventive mortar repair. Wait for spalling and you’re doing brick restoration instead, and the price jumps accordingly.
What repointing costs around Staten Island
Numbers depend on access and height more than anything else. Here’s roughly where jobs land:
| Job | Typical cost |
|---|---|
| Straightforward wall, ground-level access | $10–$20 per square foot |
| Chimneys, tight urban lots, second-story work | $20–$30 per square foot (staging and access push it up) |
| Full row-home facade | $4,000–$12,000, depending on height and condition |
Good repointing, done right, lasts 25 to 50 years. Coastal, freeze-thaw climates like ours land on the shorter end of that range.
The mortar mistake that turns a repair into a replacement
One warning I give every client before they hire anyone: the new mortar has to match the old in strength and profile, not just color. A lot of the brick housing stock in the older sections of Staten Island — places like St. George and Stapleton, with their brick rowhouses and two-families — dates back to the early 1900s through the 1930s, and that brick is soft. If a contractor packs those joints with a hard, modern Portland-heavy mortar, the mortar ends up stronger than the brick. Then the brick faces start to spall instead of the mortar wearing down the way it’s supposed to. This is basic historic masonry practice, and the Brick Industry Association publishes solid technical notes on it — I lean on the Brick Industry Association’s technical resources whenever I’m matching older work. Row homes add their own wrinkle because of shared-wall geometry, which I get into in brick pointing for Staten Island row homes.
My two-minute yearly wall check
- Scrape a joint with a key: does it hold, or crumble?
- Check the base of the wall for sandy grit.
- Run your eye along the south and west faces for popped brick faces.
- Look for white efflorescence and any damp spots inside.
- Photograph anything questionable and compare it next season.
Do that once a year, on the same weekend if it helps you remember, and you’ll almost never get caught by surprise the way my Great Kills client nearly did.
Questions homeowners ask me about repointing
How much does repointing cost in Staten Island? For a straightforward, accessible wall, figure $10 to $20 per square foot. Chimney work and anything above the first floor run $20 to $30 per square foot because of staging, and a full row-home facade typically lands between $4,000 and $12,000 depending on height and condition.
Can I just repoint the bad sections, or does the whole wall need it? Spot repointing is common and sensible if the rest of the wall is genuinely sound. The trick is matching the mortar color and profile so the patch doesn’t stand out, and actually checking the surrounding joints with a key before you decide to stop there.
What mortar is safe to use on an older Staten Island brick home? Soft, historic brick needs a softer, lime-rich mortar, not a hard modern Portland mix. Matching strength and profile to the original brick is the difference between mortar repair that lasts decades and repointing that causes the brick itself to spall within a few winters. Rowhome stock elsewhere runs into exactly this — a Philadelphia masonry contractor spends a good part of the year undoing hard-mortar repointing done a decade or two ago.
Is repointing a DIY job? Small, ground-level patches are doable for a careful homeowner. Mixing a mortar that matches soft historic brick, and packing joints cleanly so they don’t just fall out again, takes practice. Chimneys and anything above the first floor should go to a professional, both for safety and for results.
