Need help! How bad is this?
We moved into our brick house 3 years ago. It's 100 years old and was probably one of the earlier homes built with a little bit of Portland cement mixed into the lime mortar. You will see in the pictures that a lot of the original plaster is still directly on top of the masonry. I'm having trouble, even after consulting with MANY masons, figuring out how worried I should be about the integrity of our walls. The masons have said different things and are often selling their services, so it can be confusing.
The cover picture for this post is from the time when we hired a talented (in many ways) handyman to patch a few weird spots on the top left and he told us we should demo it and put up drywall. We didn't end up doing that but hired someone else who used gypsum to patch the areas we had to and lord knows how that will hold up. The rest of the house hasn't had the plaster disturbed like this.
Here is what we know:
- We need some spot pointing (can't afford $35,000 for full repointing). 2 out of 3 masons said spot pointing would do the trick
- We can't fix the walls with lime plaster due to the tar coating on the interior of the brick that was applied when the home was built.
- We have spots all over the house that are more hollow sounding when we knock, some places that feel a little sandy, and a lot is still solid
- Our back walls are quite uneven (see picture with the cabinet- you can see the gap where the bottom should meet the wall
- We don't have a rising damp issues
- Our windows are fine, need recaulking
- Our foundation is level, no issues in the basement that we have observed
What I'd like to know:
- We had our kitchen redone and they didn't redo the walls. They said they are find/solid but should I be concerned that they bow out in the middle? Does that mean the plaster is failing or just that over the years things settled or were patched badly? The outside of the house has been inspected- no bowing or indications of structural issue.
- When we do patch the sandy clumpy looking areas, what material should we be using? Should we be piecemeal doing framing and drywall to avoid this issue?
- Any other thoughts!
Thanks so much.