Masonry Work in Lebanon and Wilson County, Tennessee

An Old County Seat With New Subdivisions Around It

Lebanon has a proper square and streets of nineteenth and early twentieth century buildings running off it. Around that sit ranch houses from the fifties through the seventies, and beyond those, farmhouses on acreage that stood there long before anyone thought of Wilson County as commuting distance to Nashville. New subdivisions have since filled the gaps.

Our Lebanon calls come overwhelmingly from the older end of that range. People buy a place with land, look under the house for the first time, and find stone piers doing a job they were never sure about. Or a family has been in the same farmhouse for decades and the chimney has reached the point where something has to happen. Old rural masonry was built with what was available, by hands not following a spec, and the only way to know what you have is to get under it and look.

• Dry laid and mortared limestone foundation walls and piers
• Chimney stacks that have settled or rotated at the base
• Old lime bedded brick with joints washed back deep
• Cellar, spring house and well house walls losing material
• Block walls on shops, garages and barns cracked at the corners

Thin Soil Sitting Directly on Flat Rock

Wilson County is cedar glade country. In a lot of places the topsoil is only a few inches deep and there is solid, nearly level limestone right underneath it. It makes for the scenery this county is known for. It also changes how anything gets built.

Two consequences show up on nearly every job. First, footings hit rock almost immediately, so digging to a depth does not apply. The answer is to prepare and key into the rock rather than bed a footing on loose fill sitting on top of it. Second, water does not soak away. It runs across the rock just below the surface, so after a wet week water is moving sideways through the top few inches of ground toward whatever is downhill.

That is why so much old masonry out here is soft at the bottom. The wall has stood in moving surface water for a century. Repointing the base without dealing with where the water crosses is a repair with a short life, and we will tell you which of the two problems is actually yours.

Stone Foundations, Piers and What Holds a Chimney Up

Old Lebanon farmhouses commonly sit on limestone piers or a stone perimeter wall, laid dry or with a lime mortar that has long since gone to sand. Stones work loose, piers lean, and the sills above start to sag. Homeowners usually notice inside first, as a floor that slopes or a door that will not latch.

This is repairable work and it is not glamorous. Support the load, take the pier or wall section apart, rebuild it plumb on a base that will not move, and repoint the surrounding stone. Done right it does not need doing again in your lifetime. Shimmed and walked away from, you are looking at it again in two years.

The same applies to chimneys, and out here the base is where we look first. A big exterior stack is a great deal of weight sitting on a footing that may never have been much more than a well chosen flat rock. If the base has settled, the stack rotates away from the house and you get a gap at the top that people mistake for a roof problem. Fixing the top of a chimney that is moving at the bottom is money thrown away.

Outbuildings Are Half of What We Do Out Here

Wilson County properties come with buildings. Smokehouses, spring houses, well houses, root cellars, detached shops, equipment sheds and hay barns on masonry piers. Some are still working buildings. Some are the reason somebody bought the place.

The masonry problems are different from a house. Nobody heats these, so the walls sit at outdoor temperature and cycle through every freeze all winter. Most were built on grade with no drainage. Many have had a metal roof added that now throws water off one edge in a sheet. Spring houses were deliberately built on running water, which is the condition that eventually takes the mortar out of them.

So we scope them honestly. A shop wall that has to be sound is one job. A stone spring house you want stabilized is another, and usually cheaper than people expect.

• Stabilizing old stone walls rather than rebuilding them where possible
• Rebuilding piers and knee walls under barns and equipment sheds
• Repairing block shop and garage walls cracked at openings and corners
• Resetting dry laid limestone walls and old fence row stone
• Grading and roof runoff corrected so the repair is not repeating

Working on Acreage and Getting a Price

Properties out on land come with practical questions we settle at the estimate. Whether a loaded truck can reach the structure without tearing up a field. Whether there is water and power at the building. Whether the drive holds up after rain. None of that is a problem. It just has to be known in advance.

You get a written scope separating what has to be done from what can wait a season. Stone and repointing work is priced by area and by how much has to be taken apart, with access and the difficulty of matching old material as the drivers. Only a site visit produces a real number. We have no yard in Wilson County, but travel is included and we are up that way often. If you have several small items, say so and we will group them into one trip.