Had a guy on a jobsite near Richmond show me a trick that flipped my whole approach to repointing

I was working on this old church rehab in Richmond last month and the foreman said I was wasting time mixing my own mortar for small repairs. He showed me one of those premixed bag sets and it matched the historic color way better than anything I had mixed up. Any of you guys use the premixed stuff for restoration work or do you stick to custom blending?

2 comments

2 Comments

veraj538d ago

Yeah, that "matched the historic color way better" bit caught my eye. Premixed can be close but it's never a perfect match for old lime mortars. You're still better off custom blending if you care about getting it historically right.

felix_williams718d ago

And here I thought I was the only one who noticed that little detail, @veraj53. The way they said "matched the historic color way better" like it was some kind of breakthrough is rich. It's basically admitting they mixed it themselves to get it right anyway, which kind of defeats the whole point of paying for a premix. Might as well save the money and time by just doing it from scratch.