Brick Repair and Masonry in Tullahoma, Tennessee

Post War Housing Stock Sets the Work

Whole streets in Tullahoma went up inside a couple of decades. Low ranch houses, brick veneer over wood frame, shallow eaves, big picture windows, carports rather than garages. It was well built for its day and most of it is still sound. But it is now sixty to eighty years old, which is exactly when the parts that were never meant to last forever start showing.

So the calls follow a pattern. Cracking above openings. Mortar joints that have weathered back a quarter inch on the weather side of the house. A chimney that is fine below the roof line and coming apart above it. Veneer that has bulged slightly away from the frame at one corner. None of that is unusual for the age. Most of it is repairable without touching the rest of the wall.

• Horizontal cracks and lifted brick directly over windows and carport openings
• Joints eroded on the south and west elevations that take the weather
• Chimney crowns cracked and top courses loose above the roof
• Efflorescence and staining on walls where a gutter has been dumping for years
• Step cracking at corners where the slab or footing has settled

Steel Lintels Over Picture Windows and Carports

This is the single most common repair we do on a mid-century Tullahoma house. The brick over a wide opening is carried on a steel angle. Water gets to that steel, it rusts, and rust takes up several times the volume of the metal it came from. The steel swells and lifts the brick sitting on it. You get a crack running level with the top of the window and mortar squeezed out of the joint above.

Fixing it means removing the brick above the opening, taking the old angle out, treating or replacing the steel, and relaying the brick with proper bearing and a way for water to get back out. Sealing the crack does nothing, because the steel keeps expanding behind it. If a lintel is caught early it is a half day job. Left alone long enough it becomes a wall rebuild.

Screen Block, Cast Stone and Painted Brick

Mid-century houses came with details you rarely see on new construction. Pierced screen block at a porch or carport, cast stone sills and planters, low garden walls that tie the front elevation together. These are worth keeping. Screen block is thin and it fails at the joints first, and we can usually repoint and replace individual units rather than take the panel down.

Painted brick is a harder conversation. A lot of it was painted in the 1970s with a film that seals the face. The wall still takes in water at the joints and now it cannot dry outward, so it pushes the paint off in sheets and takes brick face with it. Stripping is possible but it is slow and it has to be done gently. We will walk you through what stripping realistically costs before you commit to it.

Churches, Schools and Small Commercial Buildings

Tullahoma has more institutional and light commercial masonry than the smaller towns nearby. Block back up with brick facing, long uninterrupted wall runs, and buildings that were put up before movement joints were standard practice. Clay brick slowly grows over its life and concrete block slowly shrinks. Build the two together with nowhere to move and the wall finds its own joint, usually at a corner or a parapet.

That work is planned differently from a house. We schedule around occupancy, we keep the site closed off during school or service hours, and we phase elevations so the building stays usable. If you manage a property here, send us the elevations you are worried about and we will look at the whole envelope rather than one crack.

What an Estimate Looks Like Here

We walk the building, get up on a ladder at the openings and the chimney, and check the joints with a tool rather than by eye. Then you get a written scope split into what needs doing now and what can be watched. Lintel work is priced per opening. Repointing is priced by wall area with the depth of cut and the access as the two things that move the number.

We do not chase every hairline. Plenty of cracking on a house this age is old, stable and not going anywhere, and we will say so. The items worth spending money on are the ones letting water into the wall, because in this climate water in a wall becomes freeze damage the following winter.