Indy Total Construction

Basic masonry repairs include:

• Filling in dings in floors and driveways
• Replacing a block or brick
• Repointing mortar

To patch concrete first remove all loose material from the old concrete. Use a vacuum cleaner. Then scrub away any oil or grease with hot water and trisodium phosphate (TSP). Use a stiff brush. Protect your hands with rubber gloves.

After the concrete is clean, wet it. Fill in the patch. The best mix for patching concrete is one part Portland cement to three parts fine, clean sand. Add concrete glue to help feather out the edges of your patch and secure it to the old concrete. Leave a wet rag or gunny sack over the patch for a couple days.

Replace a broken or missing concrete block with the same mix. Chisel the old mortar away. Soak the new block in water for five minutes and wet the blocks around the hole. Trowel in mortar on all sides and set in the new block. You may have to take some mortar out little by little to make the block fit. Keep nudging the block with your trowel handle or a piece of wood. Don’t use a hammer.

Once the block is in place and aligned, tool the joint to match the rest of the wall. If the other joints are tuckpointed (grooved) make the new joint match. Wipe up any mortar spilled on the face of the block before it hardens.

Use a finishing tool to finish mortar joints after the mortar begins to harden.

When you replace a brick or block, trowel in mortar around the opening. Nudge the block in place with the handle of a trowel or a piece of wood.

To patch concrete, clean and wet the area. Fill in the area and feather the edges so the patch will stick.

Replacing a fired (red) brick is the same as a concrete block. But be very careful to match the color or your replacement will stand out..

Try not to spill mortar over the face of the brick. If you do, you can remove the stain with acid and a stiff brush. BE CAREFUL WHEN WORKING WITH ACID. Always add the acid to water. Adding water to acid can cause an explosion. Protect yourself with goggles and rubber gloves. Wear old clothing. Muriatic acid will remove clothes, eyes, and skin faster than it will remove the mortar stain.

Repointing is putting new mortar into joints when the old mortar is falling out. First clean out the crumbling mortar. You can make a tool for this by nailing through a block of wood until the point of the nail extends 1/2 inch. Slide this point along the joints and you won’t dig too deep. Then wet the bricks and flush out loose mortar with a good strong hose jet.

Mix no more mortar than you can use in one hour. If you are repointing a whole wall or chimney, use any color mortar. However, if you are patching only a section, take care to match the color of the old mortar. Don’t work with mortar when the temperature is below freezing.

You can make a tool to remove old mortar by driving a nail through a block of wood until it extends about 1/2 inch.

Basements are simply concrete boxes set in the ground. In dry parts of the country, seasonal rains may flood a basement. In wetter areas, ground water may keep the basement damp all year. Three common basement problems are:

• Dampness

• Cracks

• Holes

If your basement has water seeping through the pores of the wall, the best solution is to waterproof it from the outside. To do this, dig down along the outside of the basement wall. Clean and coat the area with an asphalt preparation.

Another solution is to lay a drainage channel along the basement wall at ground level. This channel should slant about 1/8 inch per running foot. The wider the channel, the more it will protect the basement wall.

New basements are usually waterproofed with asphalt or plastic or a combination of the two.

Two kinds of drainage protection are possible for a basement. One is to lay a drain at the bottom of the wall in loose gravel. This carries off water before water pressure accumulates. Another solution is to build up the soil around the building so it will carry off the surface water before it soaks into the ground.

If the water can’t be stopped from the outside and is caused by a crack, use a wire brush to clean all loose material out of the crack. Shape the crack into a keyway with a chisel. Fill the keyway with mortar or epoxy cement.

Mortar is made by mixing one part mortar cement with three parts fine, sharp sand (beach sand won’t cling) and a little water or glue. Mortar shrinks when it dries, so, for a final waterproofing, cover the mortar with epoxy cement. You may fill the entire crack with epoxy cement if the wall is dry. Epoxy works better than mortar but costs more.

If the hole must be filled while it is wet, use a fast-setting hydraulic cement. Mix it according to the directions on the package and roll it into a

stick shape. As soon as the cement starts to harden, force it into the hole. Smooth it with a trowel and hold it in place until it finishes setting.

Paint damp basement walls with dry powder. Dry powder is a concrete-base paint that mixes with water and helps seal the pores of the concrete. You may also use latex paint.

If all of this fails you may have to learn to live with periodic or constant flooding. Capping the floor with cement and inclining it to the center of the basement, will create a drain channel which can be run to a sewer drain. If the basement floor is below sewer level, end the channel at a hole in the floor called a sump. A pump connected to the sump will lift water to the nearest sewer drain or the outside.

Older walls and sometimes even new ones will need some repair before finishing. The most common wall repairs include:

• Dents

• Small holes

• Large holes

• Nail pops

• Split tape

You can repair dents by sanding around them, trowling joint compound (spackle) into the dent, and finally smoothing out the area. This is essentially plastering. Once it is dry, you can sand, seal, paint, or wallpaper the patch to match the rest of the wall.

Small holes are repaired like dents. A wad of newspaper behind the hole will prevent the joint compound from falling between the walls.

For large holes, you will have to patch a piece of drywall into place. Remove all loose material from around the hole with a utility knife. Then cut a piece of drywall to fill the hole. If the patch doesn’t rest on solid wood, set a screw in the patch to use as a handle. After the joint compound hardens, remove the screw and plaster the whole patch with joint cement. Then sand the patch to match the rest of the wall.

When the house framing expands or shrinks, nails pop and become visible under the paint or wallpaper. If the nails are tight, just drive them back below the surface with a claw hammer. Plaster the dent with joint compound. If the nails are loose, pull them if it won’t damage the wall, or drive them so deep they won’t come out again. Then drive new nails nearby. Cover the nails with joint cement. Use only drywall nails. Regular nails will rust when covered with joint cement.

Split tape is caused by the house settling. The tape will bulge like a bubble or blister or actually crack. Cut and pull off the loose tape. Remove all the loose tape or it will split again. Then sand the area and spread a thin coat of joint compound over it. With a wide putty knife work the tape into this compound. Plaster over the tape with compound. When it is dry, sand it.

Bathroom and kitchen walls are sometimes covered with ceramic tile. When a tile is cracked, it should be replaced. Start by removing the tile and old grout. You may have to break the tile with a hammer and chisel.

Repair large holes by cutting a piece of drywall to fit the hole. Cement the patch and hold it in place with a handle made from a screw. When it has dried, remove the screw and plaster, sand and finish the whole area.

Sometimes it is necessary to back a hole with newspaper when filling a hole with spackle or patching plaster. A piece of wire screen or plasterboard works well also.

Most wall repair is essentially plastering. On drywall, use drywall cement or spackle to fill the hole. Wood walls are repaired with wood putty.

Nail pops that are tight can simply be driven back in with a hammer and a nail set. Loose nails should be pulled or driven in. Drive a new nail nearby.

Although the tile is usually set in a special cement, it is much easier to glue the replacement tile with white epoxy cement. The wall must be dry. Use a putty knife or cover your finger with a piece of plastic or cellophane and work the epoxy around the tile to match the old grout. Hold the tile in place until the epoxy begins to set.

Clean all cement off the tiles before it hardens.

Wallpaper is difficult to repair. To replace a greasy or torn spot, carefully tear a piece of matching wallpaper from the front of the patch so the backing will be torn away from the edges. Remove the old piece. Match the pattern and paste down the new patch. The seams will always be slightly visible, but the ragged edges will make them less obvious.

Sometimes wallpaper bulges loose in a bubble. Cut a small slit in the bubble and force paste behind it, in order to work the bubble down. The cut is less visible if it is made along a straight line in the wallpaper pattern.

Remove all tape that is loose. Spread joint compound over the area and work new tape down with a putty knife. Then plaster over.

An uneven piece of wallpaper is less noticeable than one that is cut straight. Tearing the backing off the edges will make it even less obvious.

Gluing tiles with white epoxy cement is easier than using grout. The cement must be spread by hand to look like grout. Protect your finger with a piece of plastic.