Moving Beyond Weeping Mortar

I know what it’s like to own a home with weeping mortar joints. Furthermore, I get how it feels to have neighbors and visitors who are less than enthusiastic about this look. Not only can this sort of façade be polarizing, but time can also make it an issue homeowners feel compelled to address, especially after hearing people groan, say, “Ew! Yuck!”, or even ask with genuine sincerity, “What do you think they were trying to do here?” as they stare at your solidified ooze.

In my previous post I explained how someone might consider Embracing Weeping Mortar. But here, I’ll introduce two other options.

I suspect that the group of renovators who can say, “I want to grind out or chip off all the joints of my brick house!” is a small club. And it would be wonderful to imagine the possibility of waving a magic wand and having your sloppy joints disappear. But real-life solutions beyond sorcery do exist.  

Let’s say that you’re like I was, finding yourself in a situation where you feel as if you absolutely must deal with a weeping mortar situation. Besides mine—a painted brick house where the uniqueness of this style has been eclipsed—I can think of another circumstance that would make this condition tougher to ignore much of these joints being damaged badly.

Perhaps over time, a multitude of chunks have been victimized by Mother Nature and her weaponized freezing and thawing. Or maybe someone started yanking off invasive vines, and in doing so they accidentally broke off large sections of the weeping mortar.

What now?

If these joints have been damaged, I supposed there are ways to repair or make these no-longer-uniform spots less noticeable. However, if the area(s) of concern is/are widespread, other measures may be taken. For one, grinding out the joints and replacing them with fresh mortar is one possibility. Or as I did, you can chip them off.

Certainly, I suppose there are ways of patching and repairing the damage. But there are two huge issues with this. First off: cost effectiveness. And secondly, a big question: Will the repair work end up being more noticeable that the damage looked before mitigation or corrective measures were taken? I believe this is highly likely.

Because of these practical considerations, I will go on to explore two other options in detail.

Grinding or Raking Weeping Mortar Joints – July 26, 2026

Chipping Off Weeping Mortar – Coming Soon

Technical Difficulties

I'm not sure what's happening with my account here at BlogSpot lately, but something's not right; photos and videos won't embed like normal and my spacing is jacked up.  
So until I can straighten things out, please consider checking out some of my older stuff.

My Top 5 Most Popular Posts:
1.  Rehab Addict Nicole Curtis on DIY  (April 24, 2012)
2.  Step 22 - Insulation (Aug. 14, 1012)
3.  Weeping Mortar Joints  (March 15, 2012)
4.  Renovation vs. New Construction (July 29, 2012)
5.  Superstorm Sandy Is A Reminder That Insurance Claims Are Complicated (1/4/13)



Thanks,
Trent
bloodsweatandpigsears@hotmail.com

Weeping Mortar Joints

Tools needed to remove WMJs.  (Brick Hammer is shown,
but any hammer to pop down on your chisel will do.)

From my end, it's clear that there is a lot of interest in the topic of Weeping Mortar Joints.  There are some that hold WMJs in favorable regard and believe they should be appreciated as an architectural element.  As I've mentioned before (see The Weeping Joints at The Fire House) when complemented effectively, I'm totally sold on how they can contribute to the exterior facade.  However, when they've been painted with the exterior brick, I think the result is less-than-impressive.  When I had weeping joints on the project we call The Fire House (before), most of my visitors believed strongly that I had no choice but to deal with them in some way.  I agreed.  

There is more than one way to skin a cat.  I've found that if you have a unique issue it's possible to get five different suggested solutions from five people.  They all may be right and they may not.  When you're the one making the decision it's up to you to listen, sort through what you've been told, and draw on your own knowledge base to move forward as you choose.  The WMJs at The Fire House (during) was an example of something that inspired a diverse variety of advice. One person strongly recommended that I hire a masonry crew to chisel away the oozing joints, grind out the mortar, and then tuckpoint replacement material back in to create more traditional looking joints.  Another visitor recommended that I find someone with a jackhammer and get out of the way.  A few thought I should simply get used to how the home looked because they knew of no viable options for me.  And another man got more specific and unloaded his seemingly costly and time-consuming advice for me to attach wire fabric to the brick and then apply stucco.  As I mentioned in my February post on this topic, it was pretty simple and I just chipped the WMJs all off myself by hand, a remedy that eluded the curious folks stopping by.

Question:  How do you eat an elephant?

Answer:  One bite at a time.

 

Front Before Removing WMJs.



After

I didn't try to chip all the weeping joints off in one day or even a weekend.  The exterior walls were between nine and ten feet high.  I broke that height in half and started moving my way around the house a day at a time and one 5' x 5' section at a time.  Some evenings I chipped away after work for 20 or 30 minutes and there was a day or two on the weekends when I did twenty-five square feet in the morning and the same sized section before dark.  It was not difficult or strenuous and there was an immediate pay-off because of how the work impacted the exterior look so profoundly.  Once the WMJs were gone, the joints then had a jagged look that differed from typical/traditional ones finished during construction with a jointer, but they looked good.  Better stated, within the painted brick exterior of The Fire House (after), they looked right and if a visitor didn't know any different, they likely assumed that the way it appeared was the way the brick facade had always been.

 

The back of The Fire House just before I removed the WMJs.  You can chip away from a ladder, but I built a box frame to use as a scaffold that I slid along and worked from as I progressed around the perimeter.  I also used this scaffolding to work from as I repaired the fascia and soffit. 

After

The Weeping Joints at The Fire House

One of the things I really love about renovating severely decrepit houses or Pig's Ears is the numerous opportunities there are to come up with a simple fix to a major problem; a solution that others have missed.  The Fire House had plenty of these challenges and the painted exterior with it's weeping mortar joints was a great one.  In the song What Was I Thinkin' American country music star Dierks Bentley sings about a cute girl, evading the law, and dealing with the little beauty's dad, but it may have been inspired by someone who painted the outside of a brick house with weeping joints who made things worse instead of better.

Weeping mortar joints are often seen in ranch homes in the southwestern United States.  The name is rooted in the fact that they're created when the mortar is allowed to weep or ooze from between the bricks and then dry in whatever squished out form it takes.  Typically, masonry mortar joints are finished off with a tool called a jointer.  In our lifetimes, we've all seen thousands of joints in buildings that have been finished this way.  However, if you see a house or building with weeping mortar joints you'll likely take more notice because it's not something you see everyday (unless you live in Arizona).

We live in the Lowcountry of South Carolina.  I know of one house in Charleston that has weeping joints and I think it looks good, due in large part because the brick and joints have never been painted and the contrasting colors work well together.  The brick is a rich brown, offset with the gray mortar, and the little house has windows trimmed in white. What helps this home to really pop from the street is the green ivy that has crept up from the ground.  These vines are always beautifully manicured and it's really charming.  However, what I had with The Fire House was ugly.  It had been painted and it was the opposite of charm; it was seriously jacked-up.        

Remember that 80's pop song by C+C Music Factory, Things That Make You Go Hmmm...?  These weeping joints fit into this category.  I lost track of all the people that paused in front of the house to ask me about them.  With puzzled looks on their faces they'd say things like, "What's that all about?", or "What do you suppose they were trying to do there?", or maybe my visitors would just look and shake their heads with disgusting disapproval as they continued forward to see if the interior looked as bad as the outside. 

To me, the dancing fighter in the clip exemplifies these mortar joints and the people chirping at me about them; it was a lot of attention and consideration spent unnecessarily.  Like plenty of other issues in the house I received countless suggestions, opinions, and words of advice for months about how I should handle this small matter and folks freely told me what I couldn't or shouldn't do.  Most made it a bigger issue than it was and in the end it was pretty simple to deal with.  I can relate to the guy in the dark trunks in that I patiently and politely listened.  When I needed to take action I did and I put the issue to rest.  I spent twenty or thirty minutes every day chipping mortar off, one 5' x 5' section at a time.  Everyday, it was the same drill and after a few weeks the problem was solved.  People were surprised and said things like, "Hey.  What happened to the stuff on the walls?"  And I'd answer flatly, "I just chipped it off.  It was easy."  And, not only did it look good, it looked like it could have always been that way.

After - This is a front section, the same view shown above.

Before - At the back.

After - Same spot.

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