Grinding or Raking Weeping Mortar Joints

Embracing Weeping Mortar - July 13, 2026

Moving Beyond Weeping Mortar - July 20, 2026

As written previously, the first house I ever bought to renovate was a property with weeping mortar joints. And what made this more of an issue to the look of this home was that the brick façade had been painted.

Weeping mortar
Pig's Ear #1 - back side 

There were many challenges I was ill-prepared for, both as a new homeowner and also in my role as first-time rehabber. Two biggies were the flood of discouraging comments from uninvited visitors. And the second was the fraternal twin: unsolicited advice. In most cases people were unwittingly thinking aloud. But I didn’t need hecklers making me aware of how this place would require much

more than a little TLC. There’d been a bright red tag on the door saying CONDEMNED – Unsafe for Human Occupation that had delivered that message from moment one.

During one of these visits, when I was immersed within the mix of work I faced, combined with the potential I saw in my mind’s eye, one chatty gray beard peppered me with how he thought I should deal with the solidified ooze framing each brick in my exterior walls. “What you need to do,” he said, “Is go down to the rental house and rent something to grind it off.”

Although I listened politely, I was less than stoked about this as a possible item being added to my growing to-do list. Yet still, I wondered if I was being hasty and mulled the idea over in my head for a few days.

And now, I want to explain why that recommendation may be the ideal solution for others, but for me it’s still in a mental file in my noggin that’s labeled No Bueno.

Perhaps I’ve accumulated more experience with the sort of equipment required to grind or rake these sorts of joints. It might just be that this man was unfamiliar with the rabbit hole/can-of-worms scenario he was proposing for me. And that’s what it would have been. Again, this is just for me. For someone else this might be a Jim Dandy solution to weeping mortar.

If I’ll get my money’s worth out of a tool, I’ll buy it. Otherwise, I am always grateful when I’m able to rent equipment. And if it’s something I’ll need for more than a day, and it’s possible, I’ll plan it out for a weekend since there is oftentimes no charge to have it on Sunday. It’s kind of a buy one, get one hack. And no one appreciates the BOGOs more than this guy.

So, if I rented some sort of grinding tool, I’d have been determined to max out my usage, getting the most out of the rental. I’d have planned on jumping on this grinding work to bang it out until I was either finished or forced to wrap at a stopping spot on Sunday. And this was why using a grinder didn’t seem like a solution for me, since it’s labor-intensive work, and I suspected slow going. I knew that after a few hours, my energy gauge would have been buried on E. And you don’t want to operate a tool like that when you’re out of gas. It’s dangerous and can get away from you quickly. And in my case, a loss of control would mean damaging my bricks. Plus, being cautiously practical, I suspected that I’d have been dissatisfied with my amount of progress. It wasn’t negativity over someone else’s idea. It was experience chirping in my brain.

Rake bits
for vertical joints

Rake Blade

In order to rake the joints of an eighteen square foot home, I would have needed a crew, and maybe multiple grinders and the ready supply of blades and bits to maintain momentum while the clock ticked. In 2000, I was new to Coastal South Carolina. I didn’t have folks to lend me tools, and I had no friends, family, buds, or former teammates to pitch in and help. I was a one-man team and raking the lengths of my WMJs was a job best suited for a squad. And no matter how I tried to plan it out, the bottom-line kept coming out intimidatingly pricey, even when I used super conservative guesstimates.

I should have been more appreciative of the suggestion, since it ultimately forced me to think it all out and then arrive at the right course of action for me on this project house, which was Chipping Off Weeping Mortar (coming soon).