Stripping the porch II

We’re pretty much done with stripping the paint off the front porch. Its funny, I keep telling myself that it will look better when it’s done. It does look better without the paint, but it’s a shame how damaged the bricks are. Hopefully, after they’ve been re-mortared, they’ll look a bit more presentable. If they don’t we’ll just paint them again :)



The next porch project is to re-mortar the bricks. We’ve got about 3 different generations of mortar. The oldest (I think) is almost black and quite soft and gritty. You can see little bits of stone in it.



The next is quite sandy colored and more doesn’t look too bad.


This last shot is what most of our mortar looks like.


Not pretty. When you say “I’m going to replace the mortar” in your head, it doesn’t sound all that bad. I went up to Lowes and bought a cheap angle grinder and a diamond blade and started cutting.



I spent an hour or so on Sunday afternoon. This is as far as I’ve got. Its dirty, tedious, and exacting work. Looks like I’m going to spend my upcoming weeks vacation “on the bricks”

Speaking of vacation, my sister is coming to visit. She’s going to stay with us for a few days and has offered to help work on the house. Silly girl. The cool thing, is that she’s very “arty” and when the time comes to do the fun interior stuff (like stencils, friezes, art glass etc, she’ll be perfect. I’m not sure how she is with brick though. Oh well, maybe we’ll just go to Magic Mountain and ride roller coasters :)