Seaward walls are surveyed year-round and pointed April to October — the salt does not take winters off, so the emergency tarp line is always on: (555) 626-8804.
Services & rates
Rates — sea-air masonry
Quoted after the survey and held sixty days. Lime, stainless, scaffolding and wash-down are inside the number; the only extra is salvage brick, quoted per thousand before you approve a single unit.
Lime repointing$18–$25/sq ft
hand-raked · NHL 3.5 in the field, NHL 5 at the weather face
Salt-face repointing$26/sq ft
the seaward elevation gets NHL 5 throughout, twice-struck
Anchored veneer$36/sq ft
316 stainless Z-anchors at 16 in o.c. — the grade salt cannot eat
Stove & hearth firebrickfrom $2,600
moderate- or high-duty to the drawing · fireclay joints
Emergency tarping & make-safefrom $280
within 48 hours, harbour-wide, any month
How a seaward wall is kept
Survey, rake, point, breathe
The same four movements on every wall in the Reach — the exposure decides the lime, the wall’s age decides everything else. The warranty runs twenty-five years, even at the waterline.
The survey & the chip
Exposure rated, mortar chip matched, and a written square-foot number left with you — the seaward face is quoted separately, because it gets a different lime.
Rake by hand
Joints opened to twice their width with chisels and vacuumed clean. The salt gets no powdered mortar to hold against the wall.
Point in two limes
NHL 3.5 in the sheltered field, NHL 5 at the weather face — flushed full in two passes, struck to the original profile.
Cure & breathe
Carbonation under mist and covers, then the twenty-five-year warranty, in your name, at the waterline if that is where the wall lives.
Since 1998
The tide-table ledger
Recent work
The sea walls
Six walls from around the Reach, every one of them downwind of the worst the harbour can throw. Ask on the phone and we will give you the street — these owners compare joints like tide gauges.
Our gable took the full south-west once a fortnight and shed mortar every March. Two seasons after Patina pointed it in the harder lime, the sea wall of the house dries before the washing does. The neighbours have all followed.
They specified 316 stainless for the anchors and explained what the cheaper grades do after five winters of spray. Six years on, nothing has streaked, nothing has moved, and nothing has rusted.
The make-safe call was answered at nine on a Sunday in February, the tarp was on by noon Monday, and the pointing followed in May exactly as quoted the previous autumn. Harbour trades do not usually work like that.
Everyone on the Reach knows which walls Patina has touched, because they are the ones still reading as brick in February instead of salt. We held out for a cheaper bid, watched that wall fail, and paid the proper price two years later anyway.
Salt, lime, stainless
Asked on every quay walk
Why two different limes on one wall?
Natural hydraulic lime comes in grades of hardness. NHL 3.5 breathes beautifully in the sheltered field; NHL 5 sets harder and stands up to driven salt on the weather face. Splitting the wall by exposure costs nothing extra on our quote and buys years of joint — the wall decides where the line falls, not the budget.
Does the salt really eat the anchors?
The ordinary stainless grades, yes — chlorides pit 304 within a few driven-spray winters. We set 316-grade stainless only, at sixteen inches on centre, hot-dipped where it meets the frame. The stone can be re-pointed in thirty years; the anchors are the part you do not want to ever revisit.
What about the stoves and the firebrick?
A harbour cottage burns from October to April, so most of our hearths get high-duty firebrick whether or not the owner asked — we ask how the room is used first. Moderate-duty goes into the Sunday-fire houses; low-duty we mostly decline to sell on the seafront at all.
How fast is the emergency line?
Forty-eight hours, harbour-wide, any month of the year. Tarping and make-safe from $280, with the proper pointing following in its proper season — a winter repair done in winter mortar is how walls end up needing us twice.
Twenty-five years, waterline included
If a joint we pointed fails, an anchor we set lets go, or a firebox we laid spalls inside twenty-five years, we return and correct it free. Salt tests everything; so do we, and only one of us publishes the result.
patina@pointingco.example · Gullwing Reach · emergency line, 24/7
Send us the weather it faces.
The direction the wall takes its weather from decides the lime, and how the stove is used decides the firebrick. The survey brings both answers plus a written square-foot number inside the week.