Crumbling mortar joints are one of the most common problems we see on London homes, but not every gap or bit of erosion means urgent work. This guide helps you judge how bad your pointing really is, what happens if you leave it, and how to avoid paying for repointing you do not yet need.
Pointing is the mortar you see between bricks. Its job is to bind the wall, shed rainwater away from the face, and let the brickwork breathe. Over decades this mortar weathers back, cracks, or turns to sand, and once it does the wall starts letting water in rather than keeping it out.
Repointing rakes out the old, failed mortar to a sensible depth and refills the joints with fresh mortar. Done properly it protects the bricks behind it, which are far more expensive to replace than the pointing is to renew.
You do not need a ladder for most of this. Stand back, then look closely at the joints you can reach and run a key or screwdriver along them.
Cosmetic weathering on a sheltered wall can often wait a year or two with no harm done. Isolated soft joints can be patched rather than tackling a whole elevation. There is no sense repointing a wall that is 20 per cent worn if the rest is sound.
It becomes urgent when water is getting through: internal damp, spalling bricks where the face has flaked off after frost, or mortar you can pull out by hand across a large area. Left too long you move from a repointing job to replacing bricks and dealing with damp, which costs considerably more.
A huge number of North London houses are Victorian or Edwardian and were built with soft lime mortar. If those joints are repointed with hard modern cement, the wall can no longer flex or breathe, so moisture gets trapped and the bricks themselves spall and crumble. We see cement smeared over old lime work regularly, and it does real damage.
The fix is matching the mortar to the wall: a lime mix on older solid brickwork, and getting the joint profile right so water runs off rather than sitting in the joint. It is slower and more skilled than a quick cement smear, which is why quality matters more than the lowest quote.
As a rough guide, expect somewhere around £45 to £90 per square metre depending on access, scaffolding, the mortar type and how much raking out is needed. A small patch repair is far cheaper than a full elevation, so always get the wall assessed rather than guessing from area alone.
Good pointing typically lasts 50 to 60 years or more, and lime pointing on older homes can last even longer if done well. Rather than working to a fixed schedule, check the joints every few years and act when they start failing.
Small, accessible patches are within reach for a careful DIYer, provided you match the existing mortar and never use hard cement on soft old brick. Anything at height, structural, or across a whole wall is best left to a bricklayer, as poor pointing often causes more damage than it prevents.
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