Brick & stone heritage restoration.Adelaide & the Adelaide Hills.
Repointing, salt damp and conservation work on some of South Australia's oldest stone buildings, and new brick and blockwork built to sit beside them. One crew, matched mortar, no shortcuts through the middle.
Four trades, and the one crew across all of them.
Repointing
Stone and brick raked out and pointed by hand. Tuck, fine-line, ribbon or cut-and-struck, in lime mortar mixed to the original sand and colour, so new joints settle in rather than announce themselves.
Salt damp
Undersetting, damp course renewal and salt-affected stone cut back to sound material. The bitumen courses laid under these walls a century ago have failed, and the salt has been climbing ever since.
Heritage restoration
Conservation work on heritage-listed and council buildings: matched stone from local quarries, matched chisel work, matched mortar, and paint or render stripped back to what is underneath.
Brick & blockwork
Brick extensions, feature walls, structural blockwork and new stonework, laid by the same hands that restore the old. That is why the join stops being obvious.
Mile End cottage
A cottage whose character had spent years hidden under paint, with aluminium windows where the originals used to be. Paint stripped back to bare stone, brickwork raked out and repointed in a heritage-appropriate mix, new timber joinery in keeping with the original style, and a brick extension added at the rear.
Paint off. Years of paint stripped back to bare stone, and the perished pointing raked out ready to be re-run.
Opening reformed. A new brick arch turned over a reformed opening, stonework toothed in either side.
Timber back in. The aluminium windows gone and new timber joinery in their place, cut to the original style.
Feature walls & new stonework
Not every job is a restoration. A good share of the work is new: feature walls, extensions, carports and garden walls, laid in stone chosen and coursed so that in twenty years nobody will be able to tell which part of the house came later.
We work on stone and brick buildings that were put up long before any of us got here.
Most restoration is undoing someone else's shortcut. Cement mortar rammed into a joint that wanted lime. Paint sealed over stone that needed to breathe. Aluminium windows where the timber ones used to be. A bitumen damp course that gave up decades ago and has been drawing salt up the wall ever since.
We take it back to sound material and match what the original mason used: the sand, the colour, the chisel work, the joint. On heritage-listed and council buildings that matching is the entire job, and it is the part that can't be hurried.
We also lay new brick and block. So the extension on the back of a cottage comes from the same hands as the repointing on the front, which is the reason the join stops being obvious.
- Based
- Adelaide, South Australia
- Servicing
- Adelaide & the Adelaide Hills
- Trades
- Stonemasonry, bricklaying, blockwork
- Buildings
- Heritage-listed, council & private