Lime cures against the calendar, not the thermostat — repointing runs April to October, and Bramblewick books the season by mid-March. The survey itself is a year-round visit.
What we do
What we build & rebuild
Retaining & garden walls
Basalt and fieldstone in full mortar beds, through-stones every third course, and free-draining stone behind so water leaves the way it arrived. A wall that holds a hillside is a drainage decision wearing a handsome coat.
Brick elevations, repointed
Joints raked by hand to twice their width and flushed full with natural hydraulic lime matched to the chip from your own wall. The wall dries after rain the way it did when it was young — that is the entire point.
Chimneys, crowns & fire features
Crowns that shed water instead of drinking it, flue tiles relined and draw-tested, firebrick boxes set in refractory. The chimney still standing at your centenary is the one that was surveyed first.
The yard ledger
Fifty-four seasons on the same hillside
Recent work
The wall book
Six jobs from around Bramblewick — walls, points and chimneys. Every owner will let you stand in the garden and stare at the joints; we would rather you did.
How it goes
Survey to last strike
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
Visit one
The survey
We photograph, measure and take a mortar chip from an inconspicuous joint. You get a drawn elevation and a written square-foot number, held for sixty days — the age of the wall sets the lime, the chip sets the match.
Week 1
Rake & scaffold
Scaffolding up, sheets down, joints raked by hand to twice their width and vacuumed clean. Depth is verified joint by joint — shallow raking is how walls fail behind beautiful mortar.
Weeks 2–4
Lay & point
Stone bedded in full mortar beds, brick swapped from era-matched salvage, everything flushed and struck to the original profile. The pace is lime’s pace, not portland’s.
Week 6
Cure, test, warrant
Misted through heat, covered against frost, chimney draw-tested with a gauge in front of you. The twenty-five-year warranty is signed into your name and the scaffold leaves for the last time.
The garden wall had been rebuilt badly twice before by people who meant well. Coldwell dismantled it numbered, found the drainage problem behind it, and re-laid it in its own stone. It is now the best thing on the property.
They repointed the schoolhouse one elevation a term so we never closed. The mason, Doyle, struck joints I would put in a frame. Parents ask who did it — which is a strange sentence about mortar.
The chimney survey paid for itself in the first hour: the crown was the problem, not the flue. Draw tested, capped, and the sitting-room stopped smelling of January.
Lime, stone, time
Asked in every garden
Why lime instead of portland on old walls?
A wall built before 1930 was designed to breathe through its mortar. Lime is softer than the brick and sacrificial — it weathers out so the brick does not. Portland is stronger than old brick, so winter breaks the BRICK to save the mortar: exactly backwards.
Can you match our stone?
From three quarries, two salvage yards and our own yard stock. The match is laid out dry on the ground beside your wall, wetted, and approved by you in daylight before a single stone is bedded.
How long does a wall take?
A 1,500-square-foot elevation repoints in two to three weeks; a rebuild is priced off the drawing and takes what the drawing says. Hand-raking is the pace — a grinder is faster and ruins the wall you called us to save.
What is behind the wall matters?
More than what faces you. Every retaining wall we build drains: free-draining stone, filter fabric, an outlet at the toe. Water is the mason’s only enemy, and it is defeated with geometry, not optimism.
Walk the wall with us.
The survey visit brings a mortar chip kit, a drawn elevation and a written square-foot number inside the week. Bramblewick and twenty miles around.