Masonry across Middle Tennessee

Masonry across Middle Tennessee

Masons who match the mortar to the brick, rebuild what is failing rather than smear over it, and know when a wall is a structure.

Masons working Nashville also cover Franklin, Brentwood, Murfreesboro, Hendersonville; the range is 65 towns across 12 counties. The houses are not the same in any two of those towns, and neither is the masonry work:

• Nashville. Pre-war brick is soft, fired lower and laid in lime mortar, and it needs lime mortar again; repointing it with modern Portland is the most common irreversible mistake in the trade.
• Brentwood. Newer brick veneer is a rain screen over a framed wall, and the problems are missing weep holes, cracked lintels and step cracks from settlement; the fix is usually local and the cause is often water.
• Murfreesboro. Newer brick veneer is a rain screen over a framed wall, and the problems are missing weep holes, cracked lintels and step cracks from settlement; the fix is usually local and the cause is often water.
• Hendersonville. Older masonry — chimneys, stoops, foundation walls — has settled and weathered for decades, and the honest repair is selective rebuild and repointing, not a coat of anything.
• Columbia. Pre-war brick is soft, fired lower and laid in lime mortar, and it needs lime mortar again; repointing it with modern Portland is the most common irreversible mistake in the trade.
• Lebanon. Rural masonry is stone walls, barn foundations and chimney work on old farmhouses, at a scale and a pace different from subdivision veneer repair.