Masonry contractor in Chicago.

Yes. Lincoln Park is our primary area and twelve service areas have their own pages, but we take work across the city and into the north and northwest suburbs. Commercial and institutional requests are reviewed anywhere in the metro area.

It is the soft, locally fired brick used across the city from roughly the 1880s to the 1930s. It is more porous and much softer than modern brick, so it has to be repointed with a softer, lime-based mortar. Repointing soft common brick with a hard Portland-rich mix traps water in the brick and spalls the faces off — one of the most common ways a well-intentioned repair destroys a wall.

Usually not for like-for-like residential repointing. You do need one for structural work — lintels, parapets, load-bearing repair — and the conversation changes entirely inside a landmark district or on a building above 80 feet. We confirm the status by parcel and put the permit path in the written scope.

A city requirement that buildings above a set height are inspected on a recurring cycle by a licensed structural engineer or architect, who files a report with the city. The report drives the repair scope. We work from that report, coordinate with the engineer of record, and document the completed work for the building's file.

By reading it on site. Brick hardness, mortar condition and depth, joint profile, where water is entering and where it is going, and whether the movement is settlement or something active. The scope comes out of that read — which is why the estimate is written after the visit and not over the phone.

Common-brick residential tuckpointing runs $8–$22 per sq ft. Landmark-district and hand-tooled work runs $20–$50 per sq ft. Commercial and mid-rise scope runs $20–$45 per sq ft. Lintel replacement runs $2,500–$8,000 on a house and $4,000–$15,000 on a taller building. The cost page breaks down every service.