Rowan Pekkala
Master mason, second generation
Thirty-seven years at the rake. Trained under his father on the Old Third Ward church scaffolds, certified in lime-conservation work, and still the only person allowed to strike the final joint on a load-bearing wall.
A wall does not want to be waterproofed. It wants to breathe at the joint and shed at the face. Give it what it wants and your great-grandchildren argue about the paint colour, not the replacement.
What we do
The services of the rake
Services
Four trades, one trowel
01
Full repointing, lime — from $18/sq ft
Joint raked by chisel to a depth of twice the width, dust vacuumed, misted, and repacked in matched lime mortar in two passes — the method the brick was designed for and the only one a conservation district will sign. Struck flush, ribbon or weather-struck, to the original profile found under the eaves.
02
Tuckpointing & colour matching — from $11/sq ft
The finer cosmetic line where the brick is sound but the wall has been patched by strangers: colour-matched mortar fill with a lime ribbon for the shadow line. The repair you cannot find at two paces, on the chimney the whole street can see.
03
Dutchman & brick replacement — from $26/brick
Spalled, cracked and previous-repair bricks cut out and replaced with reclaimed stock matched for strike, colour and era — sourced from yards that demolish carefully for exactly this reason. The wall keeps its sentence; a few words change.
04
Paint stripping & cleaning — from $7/sq ft
Chemical poultice and low-pressure rinse, never sandblast — blasting takes the fired face off the brick and the wall drinks forever after. Under the paint there is usually a colour worth the patience, and always a decision worth the invoice.
Gableton · Old Third Ward · 2024–2026
Walls brought back
Six restorations from the last two seasons — photographed after a full winter, because a repointing job only looks finished after it has breathed through one.
Lime, in writing
Every repointing quote names the mortar: lime, gauged to the brick’s hardness and the wall’s exposure. If a contractor offers to repoint your century brick in cement from a yellow tube, they are selling you the wall’s coffin — ours is lime, and it is in the contract.
The chemistry, briefly: soft historic brick must dry outward through the mortar joint, because it was fired to absorb and release. Cement jointing is harder than the brick — moisture backs into the brick face instead, and the face spalls off in sheets within a decade. Lime jointing sacrifices itself a grain at a time so the wall never has to. It is the difference between a wall that maintains itself for fifty years and one that gets a dramatic quote in twenty.
Interior and chimney work continues all winter — the scaffold goes up when the schedule says, not when the weather apologises · (555) 507-3394 · joints@rakejoint.example
How it goes
From the probe to the last strike
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
Visit 1
The probe & the mortar read
We open a square foot at the worst corner, read the original mortar’s composition and the joint profile, and photograph the brick’s condition behind it. The quote names the mix, the depth and the strike — and it is the same whoever rakes the wall.
Week 1
Sample & approval
A panel the width of a door, repointed and cured, for you and — where it applies — the district’s review. Colour and profile are approved against the panel, never against a memory or a photograph of somebody else’s wall.
The build
Rake, vac, mist, repack
Joints raked by chisel to twice their width, dust vacuumed rather than blown, brick misted, and mortar pressed in two passes an hour apart. A mason repoints eight to twelve square feet a day; the wall sets the pace and we do not argue with it.
Cure
The slow fortnight
Lime gains strength over weeks as it carbonates, and it must dry slowly — misted sheets in heat, blankets in cold. We return to tend the cure like a nursery, because the first fortnight decides the next fifty years.
Final
The strike & the folder
The finished joints struck to the approved profile, the panel photographed beside the wall, and the folder handed over: the mortar mix, the brick sources, the cure log — everything the next generation needs to maintain what this one restored.
Thirty-seven years at the rake
The practice, in figures
The historic board rejected two bids before Rakejoint’s — the first wanted to seal the wall, the second wanted to grind every joint. Pekkala opened a probe square, showed us the original profile, and matched it. The board approved the panel in one sitting and the wall came through last winter better than the year before it.
He repointed the front of our church thirty years ago; he has just repointed the transept, and the earlier work needed nothing but a rinse. There are two generations of proof on one scaffold and the joints on both read the same.
They stripped forty years of grey paint off a wall we were quoted to tear down. Nobody in the meeting believed it was the same house. The invoice was a third of the demolition bid and the brick outlives us all now.
Asked at every probe
How do I know if my wall needs repointing?
The pencil test: scratch the joint with a key or a pencil tip. If it crumbles to loose grit, the wall is repointing itself in the wrong direction — get ahead of it. If it holds but recedes behind the brick face, it has years left. Either way the probe visit costs nothing and answers everything.
Why not repoint in cement — it is cheaper and stronger?
Stronger is the failure. Historic brick is soft and must dry through the joint; cement is harder than the brick, so the moisture backs into the face and the brick spalls off in sheets. The wall becomes structurally cement ribs with clay shrapnel between them. Lime is cheaper per decade by any arithmetic you choose.
How long does a full house take?
A typical street front is three to five weeks: scaffold, rake, repack, and the cure we tend rather than rush. The mason-day is the honest unit — eight to twelve square feet — and any bid promising more is promising a grinder, which is the other way walls die.
Can you match bricks that are missing or spalled?
Almost always. We source reclaimed stock from the demolition yards that save it precisely for this, matched for era, strike and colour, and cut dutchmen to the pocket rather than the pocket to the brick. The repair is meant to disappear, and mostly it does.
The wall will tell us everything.
One opened square foot answers what a photograph cannot: the original mix, the joint profile, and what the brick needs for its next century. The probe is free, the folder is yours whoever rakes the wall, and we travel for interesting brick.