Mostly, the mortar joints are pretty good on the house. Except, in front, the rain runs off the roof and pours onto the side porch, which gets behind the wall. The porch deck is something funky, too. It appears that the original porch deck was probably concrete and poorly constructed. That deck deteriorated, and the fix was to pour another concrete slab on top of the old one. At the doors, the concrete porch elevation is about two and one half inches above the thresholds. This creates an odd gap.
I want to rebuild all of this in the proper way. My confidence level in myself is high in regards to my ability to tuck point the brick. I think I could eventually cast new caps for the porch wall. Here it is:
The rain runs off behind this wall, and see how it leans!? The mold growing on the wall shows how the water is flowing within the bricks. You can see the deteriorated wall cap. I will make rubble out of the cap and take down this wall. I will pull it down from this column in the foreground, from the top courses down to the course that is solid and level. The destruction will continue to pull apart all the failed brick work to the corner and around to the column at the steps.
This will make access to the concrete porch much easier. Then, all the concrete deck will be pounded into rubble and removed, along with the poor, loose, back fill underneath.
I will install a system to drain the water off the porch. Then I will build everything back, Federal Grade.
In the mean time, I can begin to tuck point the other parts of the front walls and the rest of the house that do not need complete re-building.
