You know that concrete sealer they used to use on concrete floors in highschool shops??? When students misbehaved and ended up in detention I gave them an old toothbrush and a hardwood tounge deptressor and had them remove the loose flaking sealer from the floor. Generally they only got detention from me ONCE!!!
snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
Still too much potential for damage. Toothbrush and vinegar instead.
All good information. I'll be heading out to HomeDepot to pick up acid, gloves, a new wirebrush (still can't find the one I know/knew I had) and other things to use to clear the mortar. I'll set my less-then-stellar "mason" (maybe he is more of a mason-ite) to work using the method you've outlined. Will also find out exactly what mortar he used as well.
Thanks again, Clare.
TKS
Don't let him anywhere near it. He is incompetent.
It takes a month for mortar to fully cure but you won't be able to wash it out.
Your only choices are to physically remove it and/or chemically remove it. If it were me, I'd be out there with a chisel (an old screw driver is OK) and a hammer knocking off the big gobs and all else I could; after that, a wire brush and after that, acid. A pressure washer might help, too. Re the wire brush, by hand should cause no problem but be careful using a powered one.
Whatever you do, do it as soon as possible, the mortar is getting harder every day.
If you let him do it you are crazy.
It is at least 99 to one that it is not lime mortar.
a.. Sets in just 15 minutes b.. Structural Strength in just 1 hour c.. Easy to use, just add water I'm hosed.
TKS
I think that opinion is universal.
I used an old file which seemed to be best followed by a wire brushing (by hand) and then a rinse down. I did a single surface of 10 bricks in 15 minutes. Extrapolating that means it's not cost effective to repair The next option is to knock the porch down and construct a sun room. That porch will never be right and there's no sense of thowing any more money at it. Now to see if I can get any of my money back for the horrible work done so far.
TKS
Yes, the contractor did a really bad job. And, I guess he claims that the job is done since he is expecting to get paid the last $100 of the $450 job.
It's up to you if you want to tell him you are not satisfied and do not plan on paying him the remaining $100. He would be a fool to try to sue you for the last $100 since it will cost him a lot of time and money to do so. Even in Small Claims Court in a lot of states (mine is New Jersey) the process is not as simple and it may initially appear. And, if he takes you to court, and you go and show them the photos etc., he will probably lose anyway.
Or, you could just give him the last $100 and move on and just not deal with that contractor in the future.
I think that I would probably just tell him that I am not paying the final $100, but that I am also not going to ask for my original $350 back.
I know a lot of people here will say don't pay him the $100, and maybe even pay someone else to fix it and then sue the original contractor to get your money back and the cost of fixing the screw-up. Personally, I wouldn't bother with any of that, and I would find a way to move on and have no further dealings with the original contractor.
As others have said, you could do the muriatic acid routine and it may help a lot. I think you could just do it yourself. And, the sooner that you do it, the better.
I would definitely skip having the contractor come back and do anything else on this.
For whatever it is worth, I recently did a repair and repointing job on my brick front steps. I decided to try doing it myself. I ended up doing a really crappy job, but it didn't end up looking anywhere near as bad as your contractor's job looks. I tried to fix my mistakes with the same muriatic acid routine that others here described, and it really did fix a lot and it looks much better. For what I wanted, it did turn out okay enough for me, but I definitely had to use the muriatic acid to clean the bricks where I messed up when I first did it.
Good luck.
Before tearing it down, look at options to cover it. Stucco comes to mind. There are things like Dryvit that can be applied. Even a brick facing.
clipped
Muriatic is the last thing I would use without an expert mason's advice. How large an area is involved? More than your picture? A simple disguise with paint might be much more satisfactory than trying to remove mortar....acryllic paint in two or three shades from brick, stiff brush. I did some cover-up on a concrete floor after a condo neighbor slopped walnut stain all over it. It is hard to get any kind of paint out of mortar, so it won't come off easily. I would start with the darkest shade from the brick, then dabble over part of that, mottling so that some of each color shows. If you are half-way skilled at matching colors, it might be a satisfactory fix. I would certainly not let the moron who did this touch it again!
You'd seriously consider paying him the last $100? Good grief!
And why not? Not only didn't he do the work contracted for, he made it worse by creating a big mess. You're entitled to your $350 back. And even if you ask for it, what's the worst he can do? Say no? I guess this is why contractors like this keep doing it.
The use of acid is to remove the little bit that cannot be removed physically. It does a good job at that, gets mortar out of all the little interstices.
Could you let us know if that photo represents the entire job that the contractor did, or if instead the job involved a larger area that is not shown in the photo? If it was a larger area, would it be possible to post a photo of the whole area?
Thanks.
"Norminn" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com...
The story gets much, MUCH worse. The very helpful neighbor who recommended him pretty much begged me to give him a chance to fix what he had done. I REALLY didn't want to, but some things you have to do just to keep the peace and at least seem to be fair.
He came back to "fix it" with 2 gallons of 37% HCl acid. He starts just pouring it from the bottle right on the bricks. Holy crap! Oodles of red, bubbling foam form up and of course he has no hose or rinse water standing by (I did, though).
We rinse it off quickly (it was eating the brick, too - that's where the red came from) and then he goes to dilute it half and half. FWIW, I had him start his "demonstration" of what he intended to do to fix it on the backside of the porch that no one really ever sees. Before I can warn him, he decided to change to a plastic milk jug and dilute the mix, which he did backwards (water into acid). After that very impressive boilover, he switched to a spray bottle (no gloves, respirator or goggles, mind you!!!). His lungs must be burning today because he was spritzing that stuff at eye level for about an hour.
Then, just as I have had enough, his wife and two year old daughter arrived to help. Really. You can't make this stuff up. Then I turn to see my "pseudo-mason" starting to chip away at the excess, HCl-soaked mortar at eye level without goggles. That was the last straw. Since he was a friend of a very helpful neighbor, I needed a lot of "evidence" to convict him of incompetence and send him away. I certainly got it in a very short time. (Some would say I already had more than enough!) Letting his little girl run around the jobsite with acid sitting around was unbelievable to me. I thought of what I would say in court if she got hurt. Thinking about the liability I said "Pack it up, you're going home." I told him that he said he knew how to do this, but he didn't even know to use a mortar sponge - that's all there is to it. I said "it's not my fault - it's yours. I don't want to have the whole place slathered in acid (by this time my eyes and throat were burning!!) while you spend days trying to fix what should have never happened." He packed up (telling me he had another friend coming by to help but I didn't care) and left. I suspect he knew how badly he had screwed up and bringing the family was a sympathy ploy that backfired as badly as his mortar work did. I think this is the worst job I have ever had a worker do. A repainting (without prep) of the wood porch supports was pretty damn bad, but that was easy to fix - do it again with proper scraping and prep. But this bad brickwork would have taken about three days to fix, at least according to how long it took to clean 10 bricks with a brush (when the mortar wasn't thorough set).
Today a friend is coming and we're going to see if a power washer does any better. It's really only a test for future reference because the porch pretty much has to come down and be replaced by a sunroom/mudroom. This fiasco merely forced my hand and made me resolute to NEVER "hire this guy because he's been out of work, has a kid, a pregnant wife, sob, sob, sob."
I came back inside and took my BP which really spiked from the conflict. I guess I am getting too damn old to deal with bald-faced liars anymore.
OK - onto the power washer. Since it's removed plenty of things that I didn't want removed before, maybe this time it will clear some of the mortar.
TKS
Yikes! Interesting story.
Yes, to say the least. I confirms what I said from the beginning, that this work was so totally incompetent that it's hard to see how the same guy is going to fix it and I probably would not have given him the chance.
When folks were recommending acid, I was wondering what effect that might have on the bricks, meaning can you just clean one area with it? Or once you start, will it brighten up the area so that you then have to clean the whole wall or it won't match? IDK, have no experience there. But maybe acid in the screwed spots and power washing all over would work? OP was smart having the knucklehead start in a back area that isn't prime visibility.
And so much for neighbor recommendations. Just shows you that sometimes even that doesn't work. Apparently this guy can't paint either. Somebody that incompetent, hard to imagine what he can do right. One of the first rules with any competent repair guy is from Clint Eastwood: "A man's gotta know his limits". I can do a lot of stuff, but I've never done brick pointing and I would never attempt that work for someone else. If I had a small spot to be done, I might use it as an opportunity to learn on my own house.
As I mentioned earlier, I am amateur when it comes to re-pointing bricks etc., and I managed to do a really crapped job on my own red brick fronts steps recently. But, based on what people here suggested, and some good YouTube videos, I decided to use diluted muriatic acid to try to clean up my mistakes. It worked well, and by diluting the muriatic acid as suggested by others I found that the acid had no impact on the red bricks. It only fizzed with the relatively new mortar and made it easier to get the excess mortar screw-ups off of the brick. It didn't lighten the bricks in the areas where I used the diluted muriatic acid, and those bricks looked the same as the other bricks that were not hit with the acid after the job was done. There was no red brick fizzing -- just mortar fizzing.
I agree. I have several contractor-type friends who work for themselves and do all kinds of contractor/construction work. But, one thing that I have found is that nearly every one of these types of people that I meet almost always say is that they can do whatever the job is. They lack the ability to just say "no" and say that I am not completely sure or experienced enough in that area to do that particular type of job. Some of these people are friends of mine, and I often try to get them to know when to say "no". I also sometimes look up on YouTube how a job that they are doing or about to do is supposed to be done and pass that on to them. They tend not to be computer literate enough to research the various types of jobs on the Internet to learn the right and wrong ways to do things.
The guy who did the brickpointing in this case is an extreme example of someone just saying, "I can do that" when, in fact, he has absolutely no clue on how to do it and no ability to even look up how to do it on YouTube etc.
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