Brick James Masonry

10/15/2026

This is a late update on the new steps job; however, progress has halted for the moment. The corner of this step and concrete landing area is currently held up with a steel shoring post in the area where I took the bricks out.
The customer and I are currently in talks on what plan to go ahead with in order to save/ or to just replace these steps all together and rebuild new.

Brick James Masonry

10/06/2026

Next up, restoring this brick driveway entranceway.

09/28/2026

Time to grout all of this stone and finish up this beautiful chimney!

09/18/2026

Hey everyone, here’s an update on the progress of this block chimney in Eden that is being turned into a beautiful stone chimney with a custom concrete cap. I’ll be finishing this up early next week, sealing it and heading on to a brick porch demo and rebuild.

I also appreciate everyone’s patience for your restoration jobs that you have booked earlier this summer. The August rain really set me back almost a full month from having continuous progress from job to job.

09/11/2026

09/11/2026

“Bricking with Brick James”, episode 2!

Today’s episode is about concrete caps.

08/29/2026

This past week I finished restoring and helped alleviate future issues with this chimney in Eden. The concrete cap with rounded edges started pitting and aggregate began to show which led to a lack of water runoff and pooling when rain would hit this chimney. To counteract this in the future, I ended up resurfacing the entire concrete area with a diamond blade surface grinder to create a smooth surface where water will naturally fall down off of the cap.

An entire grind and re-point was done on this chimney along with 6 brick extractions and replacements. I will be back to remove all of the old flashing and install new flashing as well.

08/13/2026

“Learning about bricks with Brick James” Episode 1: Wood?

08/13/2026

Moving right along onto another chimney restoration!

This chimney has a top course of brick that is corbeled out with a raised concrete cap (which by now you may know I loathe for reasons such as increased water deterioration etc…).

So to be honest (and all of this I explain to every customer in detail so they’re aware of why their chimney has started to deteriorate) the only reason we have issues on this chimney such as sprawling brick, cracked brick, popped out mortar joints, flashing damage and brick displacement is due to no drip edge.

Surprisingly, the finished concrete on top of the chimney is in excellent condition, no micro cracks from the concrete shrinking or gaps in-between the flues. So to increase longevity, I am surface grinding the entire cap to increase water runoff due to some flat areas of the concrete starting to pit from sustained standing water. A full chimney repointing will be done, brick extraction and replacement of any and all cracked bricks, flashing tear out and replacement and lastly I will be cutting a drip edge into the underside of the first course of corbeled out brick with a micro blade as I have just enough room to install one due to the amount of room available to be able to do so.

I have already smoothed out the top concrete area with a surface grinder and am done with grinding out all of the mortar joints and extracting the brick! I will be repointing the chimney today with a lighter N-Type mortar, a hint of “light Buff” mortar dye and adding an acrylic bonding agent additive to the mortar to increase overall strength of the new masonry bond.

08/12/2026

Closed out this full chimney demo and re-build today by cleaning all of the brick and started scaffolding tear down.

Only a few materials on this chimney were salvageable, two of the interior clay flues, the chimney liner and top vent cap. Other than that, everything is new and the final product turned out great. With new flashing, extra water barrier protection around the base of the chimney, and a drip-edge cut into the bottom of the pre-cast concrete cap, this chimney now has decades of use and a clean individualized tradesman look to it.