Re-pointing

Using appropriate mortar matters

Once upon a time, everybody knew that the Three Little Pigs had built their houses of straw, sticks, and brick, respectively, and that only the house that was made of brick could withstand the huffing and puffing of the Big Bad Wolf. The imparted wisdom of this fable carries an undeniable message about the superior strength of bricks, but leaves out one important detail about masonry construction that I have come to know well, after decades of caring for historic buildings built of brick and stone. The detail is this: if your house is built of brick or stone, eventually you will have to repoint it. Repointing is the process of removing and then replacing the old mortar, which is the adhesive that’s been holding the bricks or stones together. It’s a regular and expected part of the maintenance of such buildings.

For centuries, a little pig building a house of brick would have used mortar that was a mixture of crushed and burned lime (from limestone, oyster shells, etc) and sand, with water. Such mortar is both flexible and breathable, meaning that it can withstand the normal thermal expansion and contraction of masonry walls, and that moisture vapor can pass through it (rather than getting trapped behind it). How do little pigs know this? I don’t know; pigs are smart. But late in the 19th century a much harder kind of mortar was developed, using Portland cement. Ever a slave to progress, little pigs, following in the footsteps of the third little pig, eagerly adopted this new recipe for mortar, thinking that increased rigidity must equal stronger; and stronger is always better. But this much more rigid and less breathable mortar doesn’t actually allow for the expansion and contraction of masonry that comes with changing weather, especially in places that experience a freeze-thaw cycle. The deterioration that results, where old stone and brick has been repointed with mortar that’s made with Portland cement, is often more advanced than it might otherwise have been. Repointing with mortar that was too rigid and impermeable actually made conditions worse, in the long run. I know more about mortar than I ever wanted to.

But this reflection is not actually a reverie about historically appropriate construction materials. Rather, I think the third little pig has his own fable to tell about repointing; it’s a fable that has nothing to do with a big bad wolf, because it’s really about what we do to ourselves as we go through entirely natural processes of aging and growing, and the accompanying expansion and contraction of our inmost selves. Being human, if we want to grow, requires such processes of us; expansion and contraction are just part of life. (Some of us may even go through emotional freeze-thaw cycles.) And from time to time in our lives, we have to repoint.

For some reason, we humans have a tendency to try to do our emotional, spiritual, and intellectual repointing with varieties of mortar that are not historically appropriate, but are often much too rigid and impermeable to allow us to grow in good and healthy ways, and that sometimes leave us damaged or further deteriorating. What do I mean by this? Adopting ideas about spiritual or moral purity, for instance, almost always involves repointing with the wrong, too rigid kind of mortar. Ideologies that are expressed as “isms” similarly employ mortar that can easily damage the very structure it is meant to hold together. Perfectionists know what it feels like when you insist on using the hardest mortar you can find, because you think that the strongest must be the best, but it turns out that strength without flexibility and breathability can do more harm than good. Being too hard on yourself is another way of repointing with the wrong kind of mortar: what looks like it could be an improvement ends up leaving you in pieces. Over and over again, and often in the name of progress, we hurt ourselves because we reach for a solution in our lives that is too firm, too sure of itself, too unyielding. We are hard too on ourselves or on others, when what we need is to be a bit gentler, a bit softer, and surely more flexible and porous.

I am involved, once again, in a project that involves the repointing of a historic building, where the hard, Portland-cement-based mortar has got to be raked out and replaced with a historically appropriate, softer, more flexible, more breathable lime-based mortar. Encountering this problem once again, I see, too, how likely I have sometimes been in my life to try to improve by looking to a solution that is too rigid and impermeable to really do me any good, even though it seems to offer the promise of stability. Sometimes I have taken such rigidity on myself, sometimes it has been thrust upon me. Maybe you know how it feels. But most of us humans are built of softer stuff, or we should be. We need to allow ourselves to expand and contract, especially as we age and grow, and especially being attentive to the climate we find ourselves in. We need to allow ourselves to breathe.

Perhaps some of us have learned the lesson of the third little pig too well, we think that tough, strong, unyielding brick construction is just what’s needed to survive in the world. And I am willing to agree that strength is good: we need to be strong. But what you learn after a few decades of historic preservation is that real strength - that brings real endurance - is more complex. Yes, we want to build a strong house that can withstand the huffings and puffings of the world around us. But inevitably and eventually, we will have to repoint.

Try to find the right mortar. And if you’ve been around for a while, chances are, that mortar needs to be flexible and breathable. That third little pig has been around with a brick house for a long time, now. And pigs are smart; I’m sure he’s had to repoint a few times by now. I hope he’s learned the soft way. I hope I have too.