The chimneys.....ah, those lovely brick chimneys....

Let's discuss those chimneys.

I don't know exactly how old they are but I'm guessing they are original to the house, so let's go with a build date of 1850 making them exactly 163 years old. That's pretty old. At some point in the house's history, someone noticed that the mortar was...shall we say, vacating the premises. This someone added mortar but didn't do a very artistic job. Let me show you what I mean....

See WAAAAY up there at the top?

Not sure what I'm talking about? Here. Let me zoom in....

Here's a view of the bottom of the chimney. See the concrete mortar patches?



Yeah, that. Not real pretty. Also, no longer sufficient. Now, there are two fireplaces per chimney and on this side, only one fireplace is actually open...and by "open", I mean not walled up and sealed up. It has a gas log set-up in it and it is in the main parlor. Why the drive to get the chimneys repointed? Well, we had two leaks....one is allowing water into the house and one is allowing bees into the house. Yes, bees. Masonary bees to be exact. The little buggers dig holes through the mortar and end up inside my house. They come in and die by the hundreds. This is what their holes look like...

The water is an issue also. It flows through the ancient mortar and carries it into the house staining the white marble hearthstone and rotting the floors. Here, I've wiped some of the dirt off the hearth to show the difference...

Here's my rotted out flooring underneath the rotted and moldy carpet and pad. You can see the hearthstone there on the right.



So, who do you call to fix an ancient chimney? Why a chimney company of course! We chose a fellow out of Columbia who had done lots of this type of work on very similar homes and was familiar with the ins and outs of the old mortar. Here's Jay and his assistant Mason (yes, a mason named Mason!) working hard on the leaking chimney.

Basically, to repoint the chimney, the masons take a small pick and a hammer and gently hammer out about an inch of the old mortar. They then use a trowel and carefully add new mortar into the joints.

Here's a close-up of the work after they've done the section...

You can tell the mortar is still wet here. Looks much better!!

This is the lower part of the chimney that I showed you before....

You can see all the dust from the old mortar on the ground. As of today they are about half way up the first chimney. They are squeezing us in between other jobs are we are pretty far out of their way and we're not in any particular hurry....unless South Carolina suddenly hits a rainy season!

I'll post more photos as the job progresses!