Repointing an inglenook

[Poorprincess]

Hi, I have been a keen follower of all your posts for last 18mths since we moved into our very own 16th century timber home. We have been very busy ever since with striping and painting our windows aswell as rearranging some internal walls upstairs, having a gorgeous hand made kitchen fitted at a price we still can't believe and now painting the outside.
I am now planning the next job I think that needs doing!
We have a lovely big inglenook fireplace in our lounge that we have a wood burner fitted into. On the back walls of the fireplace the bricks are very black and the grouting is quite loose in areas. We have been advised that we need to,at some point,replace the bottom few rows of bricks.they are extremely soft and crumbly in places. Just wondered what thoughts anyone might have on while the bricks are being replaced would it be an idea to also repoint all of brickwork within the inglenook. We were thinking that if this was done aswell as the bricks cleaned up a bit,it would show of the lovely brick work much better. We know all the soot marks are part of the history of it all but as it is at the moment we don't really feel you get to see it at its best.

 

[88v8]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

Pictures always help... if you use your photo-sharing site - Photobucket etc - and paste the IMG code in here, that will bypass the forum links on image size.
Then we can suggest a way forward for you to consider.

In general when restoring an old house, remember that you can only destroy history and originality once.

Ivor

PS painting the outside of a timbered building is full of pitfalls - not wishing to confuse the thread before we even start, but what are you painting, and what with?

 

[Zebra]

If you can find some appropriate bricks of a similar age and appearance, then replacing some is quite feasible, using lime mortar of course. As is scraping out the loose mortar, leaving what is still good, and replacing only the parts you need to. I wouldn't replace all of it if it doesn't need it, as you are losing more of the house's historical fabric.
The following might not work if your existing mortar is very sooty, but it is possible to save the mortar you rake out, crush it down, add more putty and use it again so that you get a good match in colour, as it's the sand that affects the colour of the mortar. I've done this inside the fireplace, but elsewhere have used either ready-made mortar or made my own, and it that also looks good enough. You can see what is new and what is old, but that's no issue. I cleaned the worst of the soot from inside my chimney and fireplace with just a wire brush. There's still enough of a black tint to suggest the sootiness that was once there, but it's not now falling down inside the fireplace.

 

[Poorprincess]

Thank you for your replies. I will try and post a photo when I can work it out!
When we spoke to a builder about replacing the bricks that had crumbled, he suggested sourcing bricks of a similar age and appearance. He comes highly recommended for work on old houses so we would ask him to do it. the alternative would be me and I'm not sure I'd fancy doing that! We haven't as yet spoken to him about repointing it all. I do understand though that you wouldn't want to clean away all the 'history', just give it a little spruce. Good tip on the wire brush, I will give that a little go at the weekend and see how that goes.
The house had been previously restored before we moved in but had just been neglected a little. Unfortunately the outside had been cement rendered in the seventies. shame but I understand really hard to replace and far too expensive for us to even think about. We are using dulux weather shield masonry paint.when I looked into it that seemed to be one of the most popular. In places the render was very sandy/crumbly so we have sealed it with a stabiliser. Still seems crumbly so will give it another coat before we paint it. We had some bad cracks on one wall which the builder has meshed and rendered. I know you have to water down the paint on the new render but how long should you leave the render to dry before you paint?