Masonry Contractors Working in Nashville, Tennessee

Two Kinds of Masonry on the Same Block

In East Nashville, Inglewood, Sylvan Park, Salemtown and the streets off Belmont you can stand in one spot and see both halves of our Nashville business. On one side, a bungalow or four square from before the war, laid in soft brick and lime rich mortar on a stone foundation, with a front porch on masonry piers. On the other, a new infill house with a thin veneer wainscot and hardscape that went in last year.

Those two need opposite treatment. The old house wants the gentlest thing that will work, because the material is soft and mostly irreplaceable. The new one is a modern assembly, and when it fails it is because a flashing or a drainage detail was skipped. Confusing the two is how good old brick gets ruined by well meaning contractors. So we ask when the house was built, then what has already been done to it. The second answer is often the reason we are there.

• Pre war brick with joints washed back deep enough to catch a finger
• Front porch piers and steps that have rotated or settled
• Old limestone or brick foundation walls under a crawl space
• Street edge retaining walls on the steeper lots bowing outward
• Newer infill veneer with staining, cracked joints or open flashing

Painted Brick, Blasted Brick and Sealed Walls

Nashville loves painted brick. On a modern wall it is a style decision. On a house from the twenties it can be a slow problem. Old brick was fired at lower temperatures, and the hard outer face is the only durable part of the unit. A film forming paint or a heavy sealer traps moisture inside. The wall takes up water, cannot dry outward, and the face eventually pops off, taking the paint with it.

The other damage we find dates to an era when people cleaned old brick by sandblasting it. That strips the fired face and leaves the soft interior exposed to weather permanently. You can spot it from the sidewalk. The brick looks pitted and grainy rather than smooth, and it sheds sand when you rub it.

There is no way to put a fired face back on a brick. What we can do is stop making it worse. That means repointing with a softer mortar that fails before the brick does, replacing units that have lost too much material, and steering you toward breathable finishes if you want the wall coated. The National Park Service publishes preservation guidance on this kind of masonry, and it is worth reading before you buy paint.

Bungalow Chimneys Are a Job of Their Own

The most common Nashville call we get is a chimney. Old city chimneys were built for coal and wood heat, then converted, then often abandoned when the house got central air. The part above the roofline takes weather from every direction and has nothing warm behind it, so it decays years ahead of the rest of the house.

What fails is usually the top. The crown is a thin skim of mortar that cracked long ago, so water runs down inside the stack. Corbelled courses hold water on their upper faces. Flashing at the roof got patched with roof cement by somebody up there for a different reason. The result is a stack that is soft for the top few feet and sound below.

That is normally a top down rebuild, which is a much smaller job than homeowners expect. We take the stack down to solid material, relay with matching brick, form a real crown with an overhang and a drip edge, and coordinate the flashing. If the flue is going back into service, have a certified sweep inspect and line it. We do the masonry and we do not certify flues.

Tight Lots, Alleys and Neighbors Ten Feet Away

Access shapes a Nashville estimate more than anything else. A house on a narrow lot with a shared drive and a neighbor close enough to hear the mixer is a different job from the same repair in an open Rutherford County yard. Material gets carried rather than driven in. Scaffold has to be planned around a fence, a deck or a mature tree.

We plan that up front rather than discovering it on day one. Where the mixing station goes, how brick reaches the back of the house, and what gets covered so your neighbor is not sweeping mortar off a car. Access is why two identical repairs can be priced differently a block apart.

• Staging and mixing worked out before the crew is scheduled
• Hand carried material and protection for shared drives and walkways
• Lift or scaffold access confirmed on tall and narrow infill houses
• Debris contained daily rather than piled for the end of the job
• Neighbor facing surfaces covered before any cutting or grinding

Overlays, Reviews and How We Quote It

Parts of Nashville sit under historic preservation or neighborhood conservation overlay zoning, administered through Metro. If your street is in one, exterior work can require review before it starts. We will not tell you what any specific overlay requires, because that depends on your address. Check with Metro early, because it affects the calendar more than the price.

Our estimate comes after a full walk of the house. We look at the wall you called about, the drainage around it, the gutters, and anything upstream putting water where it should not be. You get a written scope separating urgent repair from work that can wait, and where an old wall can simply be monitored we will say so. Send photos with the quote form and we can usually tell you what you are dealing with before we drive up.