Hiring

Questions That Tell You Whether You Are Talking to a Mason

You do not need to know masonry to hire well. You need six or seven questions and the patience to listen to how somebody answers them.

Why this is hard to judge from the driveway

Masonry hides its own quality. Once a wall is tooled, a joint cut back three quarters of an inch and one skimmed over the top of failed mortar look nearly identical. The difference shows three winters later, by which time the person who did it may be unreachable.

So you cannot inspect the work at the end, because the parts that matter are behind the face. What you can do is listen to how somebody talks about the job before it starts. A mason gets more specific as you press. A generalist gets vaguer, or starts talking about price.

Start with license and insurance, and verify both yourself

Ask it plainly and listen to the shape of the answer. There is no masonry license in this state to hold, so anyone describing himself as a licensed mason is either being loose with the word or counting on you not knowing the difference. What he can hold is a contractor license, and the Tennessee Board for Licensing Contractors is who issues it, on a scale tied to the size of the job rather than to the trade. Somebody running a real business knows roughly where that line falls and says so without getting prickly about being asked. Then confirm the figure and the license with the Board yourself, because an answer on the phone is a starting point rather than a check.

Insurance protects your money rather than your feelings. Ask for general liability, and workers compensation if more than one person will be on site. Then ask for the certificate to come from the insurance agent rather than as a photograph on a phone. That single request filters out a surprising number of callers and costs an insured contractor nothing.

• Are you licensed with the Tennessee Board for Licensing Contractors, and under what name
• Can your agent send the liability certificate directly to me
• Do you carry workers compensation for everyone on my property
• Will you pull the permit if this work needs one
• Is the crew yours, or subcontracted

Ask what mortar they will use, and why

This is the most revealing question you can ask and it takes four words. What mortar are you using.

A mason answers with a type. Type N, Type S, sometimes Type O on soft historic brick, and then explains why that suits your wall. What you want to hear is some version of matching the existing masonry rather than beating it. Mortar is meant to be softer than the brick around it, so that when something moves the joint gives instead of the brick face. Mortar mixed too strong turns your brick into the sacrificial part, and on the soft nineteenth century brick around the Murfreesboro square that mistake destroys a wall.

A generalist says mortar, or premix, or whatever the store sells. On garden edging that is no crime. On a hundred year old wall it is the whole ballgame. ASTM C270 is the standard the trade works to, and anyone bidding repointing should be able to name a type and defend it.

Ask how deep they cut the joints

On repointing, this question decides whether you are buying twenty years or three. Old mortar has to come out to a depth that gives new mortar something to key into, generally around two to two and a half times the joint width and normally at least three quarters of an inch.

Ask what they cut with. Hand chisels, or a grinder with a proper joint blade run carefully, are both legitimate. Scraping the surface and buttering fresh mortar over the top is not. A grinder in careless hands widens joints and nicks brick edges, and that damage is permanent and obvious from the street, so somebody who talks unprompted about protecting the arrises has done this before.

Then ask how they will match the joint profile. Concave, weathered, flush and raked all read differently in sunlight, and the wrong profile looks patched forever even when the color is right.

Ask where the water is coming from

This sorts the trades faster than anything technical, because it is a diagnostic question rather than a knowledge question.

Masonry rarely fails because masonry got old. It fails because water was delivered to one spot for years. A leaking gutter joint, a downspout dumping at the foundation, grade sloping back toward the house, a sprinkler head watering brick every morning, blocked weeps, flashing that stopped short over a window.

A mason walks the elevation, looks up at the gutter and down at the grade, and tells you what he thinks is feeding the damage. He may tell you to fix the gutter before he starts. That is a good sign, not a lost sale. Anyone quoting the repair without asking why the wall got wet is selling you the same repair again in five years, and in a climate that freezes and thaws all winter the second failure arrives faster.

Ask about weather, sequence and what happens on site

Middle Tennessee has a real winter constraint and honest contractors raise it unprompted. Ask what happens if a cold snap lands mid-job. Below roughly forty degrees fresh joints need tenting and heat, or the work waits for the weather. A mason who answers without hesitating has worked through a Middle Tennessee winter. One who treats it as an odd question has not.

So ask what happens if a cold snap lands mid job. Good answers involve tenting, heated enclosures, warming materials, or pausing and telling you. The answer you do not want is that weather is not a problem, because here it is. Then work through the practicalities.

• How many days, and how many of those will anyone be on site
• What happens to my landscaping, driveway and gutters during the work
• Where does the mixing station go and how does the site get cleaned
• Will you do a test patch before doing the whole wall
• What is the payment schedule, and what is due before anything starts
• Who do I call if something looks wrong next spring

Ask to see work that has been through a few winters

Anybody can photograph a wall on the day it was finished, because fresh mortar looks good universally. Ask instead for masonry the same contractor did three or more years ago, ideally repointing, ideally somewhere in Rutherford County you can drive past.

Standing in front of an older job tells you what a photograph cannot. Whether the color settled into a match or stayed obviously new. Whether the joint profile stayed consistent along the run. Whether grinder work chewed the brick edges. Look from twenty feet, which is how everyone else sees your house, then from arm's length.

A few things should end the conversation regardless. Somebody who knocked on your door with material left over from another job. Most of the money demanded before work begins. A verbal scope with nothing written about what is included and excluded. Get two or three written quotes describing the same scope, and if the numbers are close, hire the person who asked the best questions about your wall.

Related services: Brick Masonry · Stone Masonry