Re-pointing stone cottage - is this really how much it costs?!

[ChefWifeLife]

Please be kind as I genuinely am shocked at a couple of quotes we have received to re-point our stone cottage.

Granted I had no real clue of what it would cost and appreciate that this is a specific skill and time required.

The first quote didn’t include scaffolding. It’s a semi-detached property; old extension doesn’t need doing as it’s not stone. I’ve also attached pictures.

Two quotes so far:

£11K
£23K

I would really appreciate any insight from
those who have had this work done or do it as a trade.

@jellytot24 it makes me feel less alone! Honestly perhaps I was completely delusional; I thought it would be a few grand tops!

We've had a 20k quote just for the back of a three storey stone house. The end gables would be an additional 15k.
Words fail me, I get it's a specialist skill and all that but I think it works out at over £160/hour.
Thus far I've paid £220 for a one day course I'm going on in April...

Recommend "your old house" Facebook group to find out if your people will use the proper mortar.

I've done lime pointing too and I'm really really crap at diy - you can go on courses or watch videos on YouTube. The lime itself is quite expensive though...

The massive quote is because pointing is shit work and they really don’t want to do it!

You cannot possibly be more inexperienced than me! Honest. You can do it!

The best thing about lime render is that you can't do damage with it. If it doesn't work, it will just crack off the surface again.

A mate learned to do this himself. Its labour intensive but really easy.
He had a rather large house and after the first year where everyone stopped him to talk as they walked past, he got on with it and it took him another year. I have no idea if it was lime mortar in his 1800s house.

Another useful FB page is I Love My Period House - sometimes I just look at photos of lovely homes to get ideas of how we could decorate and renovate ours, but it's also been useful when it comes to things like repointing and replacing various pieces. Is your house listed OP? I can't remember if you've already mentioned.

It doesn’t look too bad of a price. I’d get several quotes as others have suggested. It might be a bit high as it looks like a couple of the windows in your first picture have been repointed with cement, which will have to be chipped out before they can repoint them properly with lime mortar.

Thanks all. I’m going to get a few more quotes and then make a plan. Whatever we decide we will need to fix the ingress around the windows and go from there 😬

I used lime putty, to be strictly correct - you mix it with sand (or horsehair, if you're being very period-accurate!). It's the same stuff you use to plaster small areas, which is why I had plastering on my mind. You can get different grades of lime for pointing; putty was right for me because my brick is pretty soft, but you're probably right the OP wants something harder. It doesn't make a huge difference to application.

is next door repointed or local ones you can copy? Repointing is ‘easy’ but if you DIY you’ll need to buy/borrow/rent a scaffold tower. You can always buy off eBay and resell when you are done, they don’t lose any value.
Also with stone, the joints can be bigger/deeper so you may need to ‘point twice’ to build it up.
Maybe post a closer pic of the stone work?

I got quoted £9000 a couple of years ago for lime mortar pointing just one gable wall of my house ( admittedly larger than yours). I went on a day long course to learn how to do it and did it myself this summer!. We had scaffolding up anyway for a roof repair and they were able to leave it up for a couple of weeks extra.
I didn't remove all the pointing, just the unsound bits which turned out to quite a lot ( as recommended by conservation officer as it's a listed building). Not a job for the faint hearted but very satisfying. Only three walls and the garden wall to go...

Lime mortar is a bit more complicated than cement but essential in a sandstone house. You should see how much damage cement repairs did too my wall!

@C4tastrophe our attached Neigbour is owned by the Duchy and rented out and is in a worse state than ours! Our two other neighbours have had theirs done but I don’t think correctly as they’re both having problems.

I’ll try and get some closer pictures tomorrow when the youngest is napping and will post them.

@Wbeezer you sound like a legend! We have two young children with no family locally so time is pretty tight and restricted. How much did you pay for the day course if you don’t mind me asking? I’m sure my husband would love it.

It was £150. My youngest is 18 so no need for babysitters. I did have a problem with baby birds though. One big hole had a nest of baby sparrows in it, I had to leave that bit and was worried they wouldn't fledge before the scaffolding needed to come down but they made it!
I keep justifying spending on other things by thinking of the money I saved!

Pointing in and of itself isn't hard, I can't bricklay decently at all but my pointing is fab. Admittedly that's with cement but surely lime mortar can't be that much harder? Definitely try a course and DIY

Lime mortar is trickier than cement as it is drier and less sticky but you soon get used to it.

We had one side of our house re-pointed with lime mortar plus removal of cement mortar just before lockdown. Two storeys, 15m long. £3k. 19 year labourer did it as apparently he enjoys it. Head phones in all day, no-one bothering him, good monies😁

Takeittotheboss where in the country are you? Maybe he wants another job :)

@ChefWifeLife - if you’re thinking of doing some of it yourself and looking to compare prices, just thought I’d chuck some info into the mix.

Have a look at Anglian Lime. I had a quick look, not sure exactly what products you’d need, but it isn’t cheap! They are helpful, give them a call and they will determine exactly what you need for the project.

Might not be of any use, but always worth comparing costs.

I've just had one wall repointed with lime mortar and it cost 13k, to be honest yours really don't look that bad I live in North Yorkshire and pretty much every house is stone built and I've seen some really bad mortar work and is easy to spot when it needs redoing. I'd only ever re do it again if I really really needed to - the mess is unbelievable.
x

We had scaffolding on 3 sides all the way up to 3 chimneys on a very large 4 story house. It was up for 1 year and cost 3.5k, so I would reckon 2k scaffolding costs for your cottage, so quote 1 will come out much cheaper than quote 1. I assume both quotes are for lime? For concrete, 5k max, but 11k for lime sounds about right. But you might not need to do a 100% rake out and redo everything. How bad is it? The preferred conservation approach is just to rake out loose bits and to patch repair. That's all we were allowed by English Heritage on our grade 1 listed house, and it saved a lot of money. You'll end up with slightly different course of lime mortar, but I girls that only adds character and will eventually all weather in.

different course - different colours.

Dh taught himself to do pointing and has done our brick outhouse and also a stone barn we own which I think was with lime mortar. Think he watched some videos, probably YouTube.