<p>In a recent article, here on our blog and on our website, we took a look at some of the issues of roof seam separation, particularly where those seams cross over and turn upwards at parapets at flat roof. Often, here in Capitol hill, when working on the typical flat roofs, we find that seams [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Without a cant strip, seams often require reinforcement in modified bitumen flat roofs.&nbsp; A cant strip is a triangular shape strip of material, installed under the roof membrane, at the substrate, between the wooden or concrete or steel, in most commercial buildings).&nbsp; In some cases can strips can be built with a homosote or even [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Recently, while visiting a client&#8217;s house we looked at these side facade. The houses is an end lot so there is a yard beside the house and that side wall is a largely contiguous uninterrupted brick wall. Along the bottom of the wall there are a few spots where bricks have spalled. Upon closer examination, [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The door in the photo below has an elaborate cement pediment, crosshead, and pilaster.</p>

<p>Some examples of historic buildings built with alternating brick bands follow</p>

<p>The chimney the pictures below is probably well over a hundred years old and looks as if it&#8217;s never been repaired or pointed. The mortar joints are deteriorated so bad that the bricks themselves are almost loose. Also, you can see this chimney has no spark arrestor or cap. So essentially rain water or precipitation [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The formboards used to build the wall in the photo below left a natural wood grain, just like the original historic formboards did about 50 to 100 years ago. Concrete is poured into a form in a wet consistency similar to a slushy wet mud. The concrete hardens quickly and within a few days to [&hellip;]</p>

<p>This building has a good example of a sawtooth skylight. Here is a look from the inside. The sawtooth style layout allows for a large roof of a factory, warehouse, or gathering space to be installed without the use of modern flat roofing products. This type of roof allows for a large area of covering [&hellip;]</p>

<p>In a masonry assembly the masonry units are held together by mortar joints. That is pretty obvious, but what a lot of people don&#8217;t know is that in a masonry wall it&#8217;s also normal and correct to have some joints wall not be built with mortar but instead be built with a resilient or elastomeric [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The ruins of this retaining wal show a good view of the cross section of the construction. It&#8217;s hard to see the base at grade and the footing is underground. Yet you can see exactly how the watertable and stone coping attach to the rubble stone construction of the wall. In this case the water [&hellip;]</p>

<p>I picked up a few peices of limestone and shells from a beach and smashed them between two larger stones to look at the inside mini fossils from the sea life in the limestone, like I always do. All looked like expected except this one stone had a bunch of natural fibers in the stone.</p>

<p>Lining out the mortar joints of bricks was common at about 100+ years ago. The practice is less common today. Lining out the mortar joints gives an appearance of a thin mortar joint of a fine pressed brick. In the photos below you can see an oxide or or brick dust coloring was applied over [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The sundial shown in the photo below was installed about 150 years ago. The raised fin like part of the sundial is called a gnomon.  This gnomon, cast a shadow that basically marks the time of day as shown in the horizontal plate.</p>

<p>In the photo below you can see examples of what is known as bastard tuck pointing. Unlike the typical brick tuck pointing done at historic brick buildings to maintain the masonry mortar joints, bastard tuck pointing is normally done at a time or shortly after the time of original construction of a wall. Bastard tuck [&hellip;]</p>

<p>A brick hod is a simple tool used for tending brick and masonry materials and units. The picture below is from a pre-1930&#8217;s In this blog post, we give a special thanks to Mark Stansbury, for permission to repost this image from his blog to ours. Stop by and check out Mark&#8217;s site at <a href="http://trowelcollector.blogspot.com" rel="nofollow">http://trowelcollector.blogspot.com</a> [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The unglazed quarry pavers in the photos are understood to be up to 100 years old. Quarry pavers such as these are unglazed kiln fired clay. Likely fired like brick at about 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. Here they are installed on a running bond pattern.</p>

<p>Modern cement masonry mortar is the combination of modern cement mix, water, and a fine aggregate such as sand. There are also various types of pre-mixed cement have different ratings based on strength. Modern cement mortar may have many advantages over historic mortar: cost / volume ratio, market accessibility and availability, compressive strength, tensile strength, [&hellip;]</p>

<p>I like this picture for several reasons, in just this one photo you can see so many things. This is a historic common brick, not a pressed brick. It&#8217;s a wide mortar joint typical of plaster covered or exposed rear exteroor walls of the time, about late 1800&#8217;s. There are subtle signs of efflorescence salts [&hellip;]</p>