More progress on the bedroom chimney breast, you've already seen the early stages in an earlier post, First-things-first.
Once the exposed brick had time to dry out Matt did some raking-out and re-pointing of the lime mortar, to remove the salt-contaminated crumbly stuff and create a groove for the new mortar to 'key' into.
Raking out/cleaning out the old mortar... dusty work, why is every home renovation project the most dust creating event ever?
Working with Lime Mortar requires some patience, consistently wetting down the brick, otherwise the new mortar will quickly dry up and crumble away. Also arm strength!
We did a lot of reading about lime and the re-pointing process before beginning, because lime isn't cheap and we wanted to get this right the first time.
In some rooms we have loose bricks that come right out of the walls, and need more delicate re-pointing, luckily with this chimney that was not the case. Just a matter of replacing mortar where it had been contaminated and was no longer sound.
This is how it looks before being brushed up after about a day, once the mortar goes in, we continue misting it for a few days, so it doesn't dry to quickly, then knock it back with a churn brush, which sort of cleans it up a bit and exposes the texture of the mortar. Matt did a really phenomenal job, which is why I'm showing it off.
Now that the re-pointing is done in here, Matt can remove the bricks from the fireplace and we can make some decisions on re-plastering. I'm not in love with exposed brick, but it could make an interesting feature wall in this bedroom, especially with this little fireplace feature...
What do you think? Re-plaster over the brick or leave it as a feature?
-Nicole
