What We Didn’t Anticipate When Repointing Our Stone Walls

We live in a really old home with a stone foundation. We started repointing our stone walls in the basement because it was time to tackle that project. Read more about that here.

Homeownership 101 says you have to take care of your foundation if you don’t want your house to develop a catastrophic issue. For a stone foundation, the outer layer of stone has to be repointed periodically – every 50 – 100 years.

Repointing stone walls means you remove the old lime mortar that is failing and replace it with new lime mortar. You only need to chip out an inch or so of the old mortar to repoint.

Easy peasy, right?

And then the old house laughed.

What we didn’t anticipate when repointing our stone walls was HOW LONG it would take.

Don’t get me wrong. We knew it would take some time. We weren’t naive enough to think this would be a weekend project.

That’s a big reason why we didn’t hire a contractor to do this job. Labor is expensive and rightfully so. We knew repointing the basement’s stone walls would be time intensive and, therefore, hiring this project out would be expensive.

We could save thousands of dollars by tackling this project ourselves.

How long has repointing the stone walls taken us?

It took two of us twelve work sessions averaging three hours each to remove the old mortar on one wall. ONE. WALL.

That’s around 90 minutes per each 1 ft x 7 ft section of wall.

That doesn’t even count the time needed to add the new lime mortar.

Lime mortar is a special type of mortar comprised of crushed limestone, sand, and water. It is specifically used for stone walls. You’re not supposed to use a Portland Cement-based product on a stone foundation as it is too hard for the stones and doesn’t allow the foundation to breathe.

At the time I’m writing this, we have not finished the repointing job. We’re still working on the second wall. Last I checked, rooms have four walls, which sucks for us. Hahahahaha!

Why has repointing taken so long? 

I’ve had a lot of time to think about this while literally chipping away at this project.

First, our stone walls have an extra skim layer over the top that is a combination of concrete and maybe some sort of plaster. We aren’t exactly sure. Whatever it was, it was not good for the foundation and it was really hard to remove. We estimate that it doubled the amount of time spent on this project.

Second, power tools were not very effective in removing the skim coat or the regular lime mortar. The hammer drill did help remove the section with concrete.

We experimented with a bunch of different removal techniques. Chipping away at the mortar with a brick hammer and a chisel ended up being our best tools.

Do you know what powers a hammer and a chisel? Humans.

This particular human really felt the shoulder burn from swinging a hammer at a stone wall and couldn’t handle much more than three hours at a time of that particular workout. Who needs a gym membership when you have stone walls to repoint?

We started with brand-new, sharp-edged tools for this project. They are definitely worn down on the edges now! I’ll let you guess which hammer is mine and which one belongs to Handy Husband.

Last, this was our first experience with repointing. There was a learning curve to figure out which techniques worked for our particular situation and we had to improve those techniques with practice.

We were also being very thorough because we wanted to do this right the first time. Not only do we care about the quality of our work and the structural integrity of our home, but I shudder to think about having to do this job over. I’d rather move.

Here’s how the first wall looked right before we started removing the old mortar.

Here’s how the wall looked with all of the old mortar removed and ready for the new lime mortar to be applied.

Aren’t those stones pretty now that you can see them?

Do we regret tackling repointing our stone walls ourselves?

No.

This would be a good winter project we told ourselves. We’d be inside where it was warm and dry doing something productive while there was snow on the ground.

Well, we were right about that.

Could a professional crew of more than two people have done this project faster? For sure.

Even though this project has been physically demanding and taken far longer than we anticipated, we don’t regret doing it ourselves. The time and effort invested in this home will be worth it in the end. And not just for the home’s sake, but for ours as well. There is something very satisfying about learning new skills, persevering when things get tough, working as a team, and finally completing a gigantic project. It’s the best.

Have you ever had a project take far longer than you anticipated? Would you tackle a project like this? I’d love to know. You can always comment on this blog post, email us here, or reach out via Instagram or Facebook.

P.S. I have “repointing” highlights saved on Instagram if you want to see videos of us in action repointing our stone walls. We hope you’ll follow us there to keep up on the latest.

P.P.S. If you want to catch up on how we knew it was time to repoint the stone walls, read this blog post.

Thanks for being here today and following along on our house adventures. If you’d like another blog post to read, check out one of these.

Old House Essential: Slower Cooker For Paint Removal

3 Reasons Old Houses May Have Stones Between The Studs

The Reason Why I Like Old Houses