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.

I thought pointing with lime mortar was a specialist job? If they have to rake out the old mortar before putting in the new that's a massive job.

If I wasn't working I'd give it a go myself.

After flooding we had a stone wall in our house that needed repointing. Our friend was a builder and showed us how to do it, it was very easy but really time consuming, he told us that's why it's so expensive to have done, because of the time you're paying for.

@NellyBarney thanks for this. To be honest things seems to have gone from bad to worse. We’re now getting pools of water on our windowsill and in our porch ( a place we’ve never had issues before). The chap who quoted 11k is coming back to see if he can help problem solve and fix the leaks first.

As there is such a difference between the 2 quotes, you should find out exactly what the cheaper quote entails. If it’s the full monty or just repairing where needed.
That concrete also looks a bit dubious, do you have damp also?

It's not very difficult, repointing, even with lime. I did a bit myself, our builder had all his children roped in during their uni holidays. Plastering and skimming is a difficult skill, repointing is just time intensive and a bit boring. Why don't you ask, to compare quotes, for an hourly/daily rate and go from there? A decent day rate in the Southwest/outside of home counties is around 200 pounds/day for a worker, up to 250 pounds/day for a master builder, plus vat. I would check that if you have so much water ingress, whether there are other issues, like broken/overflowing/blocked gutter etc.

As repointing is an easy/entry level job, once you know the day rate of people in a company, you could ask for the more juniour people to be put on the job and to be charged accordingly. You don't want the expert boss there for 8 weeks at 300 pounds/day, if two of his labourers could do the job at 20 pounds/hour with a bit of instructing/checking in by their boss.

What would everyone suggest. The water coming in has worsened. The roof has to be done but we don’t have enough money spare to do the whole house re-pointing. Starting to feel a bit stressed out now 😔

I would honestly have a got at the pointing yourself, I'm not a skilled DIY person myself and it is honestly so easy. If you don't have someone who could show you there are some really good tutorials available on you tube that are in depth. Our builder friend told us anyone could do it, which turned out to be true.
The roof is the one you perhaps have no option but to pay a professional

I would ask if someone can teach you or go on a course. And DIY. Failing that, YouTube.

Start with the worst bits that really really need doing. Then on to the rest of the house. By the time you've done an entire house, you'll be proficient and can redo the worst bits that you started on if you need to.

If all that fails, find a willing teen or three, get them to learn and do it? Or a retired builder/brickie/similar

For the teens it's a great idea, they can earn a lot of cash every summer just by learning this one task. Backbreaking oh God yes, but the money.

And if you do get any sorted, send them my way, my whole house needs repointing but with normal stuff not lime stuff.

I was quoted 4k for my terraced cottage - I haven't read all the replies but I'm going to look into doing it myself

I think my worry is that we do it ourselves and it’s just not done well enough and we end up paying someone to do it later down the line. My husband only has one day off at the weekend which is our only family day and we have two young children so can only do it when they’re either at nursery and school or one of us is looking after them.

Blimey. I was thinking of getting our garden wall done, as that's a lot less tricky than the house (which has to be lime). I've done the bits on the garden wall where the mortar had fallen out, but thought I might get someone in to do the rest, as it is a long run, double sided, and takes a lot of mortar because it has large mortar lines and a void within. I mix mortar by hand and drill paddle, a pro would have a cement mixer for it.

So I can now add 'repoint garden wall' to my Masonry List, which already has 're pointing the house in lime, and building Mr Bluemongoose some cold frames' on it......🙄

Just check if it needs to be lime or cement mortar, and if lime, whether premixed NHL will do (premixed as in a mixture you buy dry in a sack, you still have to mix it with the water as you need it) or whether you'd have to use hot lime. NHL-type lime mortar is a bit trickier than cement mortar, and I honestly think hot lime is getting towards being a pro job- it's much harder and nastier to handle, so I am told, but you can learn how to do any pointing, there are courses in all kinds if you look around. If using NHL, do check on the 'number' you need ( very roughly speaking, the number tells you how strong it is, you don't want it to strong or too weak for your stone/brick/weather)
How easy it is also depends on how narrow the joints are. Mine are 6mm or less, which is a right pain (i.e., they're very thin, I have had to get very fine grained NHL for it and it's extremely fiddly to do, and very hard to clear out the joints- some idiot before me did that really badly - when they stupidly repointed lime with cement which is why I'm having to repoint in the first place- and damaged the brick edges).

Just for context my husband works full time and I work 3.5 days over 3 days. We have a 5.5YO and a 2.4YO. 😬

Or let them watch? Lime isn't nice to touch, but it's not the sort of job where you can't leave it alone for a moment or it'll set.

(And sympathies. DD is 5.5 and is gutted she's not allowed to play with lime putty - she has been my renovation buddy since we moved into our house in 2018, and she is excellent at removing wallpaper/doing filler/sanding. However I sometimes feel despairing that jobs that should take half an hour inevitably take ... days.)

It's not a hard job, just time consuming. My brother and I did our family house with our dad when growing up (I guess we were 17 and 13). A kanga, scaffolding tower, chisels, buckets, mortar and as the house was soft red stone, the stone treatment at the end. Scaffolding costs a fortune now....

So I’ve just had a very competitive quote of 4K max. We could just about afford this.

The chap is a stone mason and specialises in hand crafted stone and does re-pointing as well. He would do this alongside his main job for “sweetie money” as he calls it 😂

We really like and trust the chap who quotes £11k but the quote can’t compete with the cheaper one. HELP!!!

So I’ve just had a very competitive quote of 4K max.

Are you sure that's not a cement quote?

Tell the £11k quite guy you’ve got a quote for £4k

square metre cost is average about £65 inc materials...sand and cement, using lime mortar its about £95 per sqm as it costs lots more...can you work out your quote using my figures...and these are london prices...i do admin part time for a builder and he is charging these prices. my figs dont include any scaffolding.

If you need to use lime then its hydraulic lime...not the putty stuff...look up NHL...for price per bag etc...just mix with sand ...some soft and some sharp in different ratios....its not a hard job....done bits here....sometimes tricky tho to stop it staining bricks...hard to clean off later etc.

If it's for sweetie money, will he do it as and when he is available around other jobs so it stretches on for months?

How’s this ended up?

@C4tastrophe we are still getting quotes. Last one today. We can’t afford the whole thing from the person we really like. Definitely don’t have the time to do it ourselves. Honestly there are so many disagreements about what we should use to re-point, even on the fb page about restoring older homes there doesn’t seem to be a single consensus. It’s so hard to know what to do.