The tedium that is involved with masonry. The life time of experience, the hours, the patience- we thought we would call in the experts. The “experts” ranged from rocker guy who could do it in a day for cheap, to the decrepit old man with the shaky hands who was more expensive, but liked the project. We didn’t really want some hotrod to come in and put concrete in the joints, or someone who wouldn’t do a uniform job, and when I called the old school guy in town who really could have done it right, he said he only would take a tuckpointing job if there was no other work available. According to him, it was easy, anyone could do it, it just takes forever, and why the hell wouldn’t we do stucco? Tuckpointing is the art of scraping out the joints of mortar between the brick, about a 1/2″ deep, and replacing it, then cleaning it up, and making it all look like no one did anything. Back when I was a kid, this is the tool you would use:
- What a tool.
You would just set your nail, and then scrape out the old, and put in the new, with what looks like a cake frosting bag. Construction work is a lot like cooking, except you have to stay outside, and it is louder, and hurts more. We decided we could do the job. We have the patience of Job, and the budget of, well, the budget of two musicians. That said, we started what would be the month long project of tuckpointing the back of our building.
Our dear friend Joe showed up to get in on the slow-paced antics, and Brett, who is a friend in town, jumped in to keep us from really getting so crazy in our old world methods that we took a decade to get the job done. He introduced the concept of the grinder, and electricity to shave days off your finish time. I’d probably still be out there if he hadn’t shown up.
Brett, the new world man.
Joe and Zac. Old world men.
You can imagine the tedium of this job. The time to reflect. The time to imagine how many bricks you could scrape out in just one afternoon. The time to think of all the trips your are gonna take on the boat one day. The time to think of the sun on your back, the tall trees, the insanity of the whole thing. The time to wonder if there really is ever an end to renovating old buildings. The time to plan out that next album. The time to consider an addiction to meth.
The weeks wore on, and so did my knuckles, and in no time at all, well, you guessed it, we finished scraping!
Then, the only thing left was putting the mortar back in, cleaning it up, cleaning the brick and selling the building! Ok, so maybe like every job wasn’t done yet, but one step. Baby steps.
Cake Decorating. Fill the void!
Then the real help showed up, and all progress stopped.
Finally, all the grooves were filled with sandy white historic mortar. The recipe we found to use was so insane, that all the masons we talked to insisted it wouldn’t work. But it did, and when we were done, it looked like, well, it just looked like a hundred year old building!
Are your ready to see post cleanup? Are you READY!????????
Can I get a YEAH!? A HELL YEAH!????
See? It looks a hundred years old, but it's NOT!!!