Oxfordshire late-Victorian house, lower ground floor render removal and repointing

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This property has witnessed several alterations to the area of brickwork at the base of the building. It was originally exposed brickwork, then it was rendered with an inappropriate cement-based render. That was later removed in favour of a lime-based render. Having assisted the clients with the ongoing salt-related deterioration of the render coat, I suggested returning this brickwork to its original format, exposed brickwork, pointed with a lime mortar. This would limit any ongoing salt deterioration to the mortar joints and allow the bricks to breathe and stay as dry as possible. With the potential to be extremely invasive with this property, the salt issue was likely introduced by the previous cement render coat. The later lime render coat essentially acted as a poultice to capture the salt before its removal. The image below is a sample area carried out before the proposed works were accepted by the client. The damage to the lime render is apparent. On return to this sample area months later, it was clear that the remaining salts were migrating into the lime mortar joints - which is what the lime mortar is supposed to be doing - sacrificing itself in favour of the bricks.

The brickwork required a great deal of care as damage had already been done by the previous cement render. Its removal had affected the faces of all of the bricks, resulting in quite a coarse face instead of the comparatively smooth kiln-fired face you might expect. The lime render was removed by hand and the brickwork was raked out. Brick replacements were carried out as needed and repairs were carried out where it wasn't appropriate, for example, on the delicate brick arches where brick removal isn't possible without the replacement of the whole arch as one unit. We used a lime-based brick repair method that we've been developing to repair some more significant areas, in particular where an extremely dense mass of cement couldn't be removed without damaging the structure of the window.