Brick: An Abused Victorian Wall is Happily Restored -

A Brick wall that has been poorly restored over the years — Years of poor restoration attempts had left this wall looking rather lack lustre.

The Scope of work

We were happily engaged to restore this elevation at the rear of a Victorian row house in Cabbagetown, Toronto. As you can see there had been a few attempts over the years to repair various sections of the wall. This resulted in a mix match of brickwork that was a far cry from the original aesthetics of the wall. The purple looking brick were manufactured by a brickmaker called J.Price. That company stopped making bricks in the 1960’s. Therefore, one would assume the repairs are at least 60 years old. Either that, or the bricklayers found reclaimed brick to use when conducting the repair. There was newer brick to be found too. At least 3 repairs had been attempted on the wall from what we could see.

Bricks have been removed and the wooden framing is exposed on this 19th century wall at the rear of a row house. Scaffolding is setup in front of the wall. — Wood framing is exposed after a single wythe of brick is removed.

Our Approach

Our first step to this project was to completely remove the brick right down to below grade. With this being a single wythe of brick, we felt a full rebuild was a better option than trying to preserve some sections. As we removed the brick, we salvaged the 1880 originals and put them to the side for use in the rebuild. Having removed all the brick, we were then ready to start rebuilding.

The mortar we used is a 100% lime based mortar. We added natural earth pigments to achieve a colour that was very close to the 140 year old original mortar. We used an Ontario sized brick called Ibstock Leicester Red. Ibstock are an English manufacturer. Their products are imported into the Canadian market by a local Toronto building supplier called Kreitmaker. They seem to be a good match for heritage brickwork. We integrated them with the reclaimed bricks we salvaged from the demo.

A red brick wall on a victorian rowhouse. The flemish bond detail has been restored. — The finished brickwork complete with Flemish bond detail.

The Result

The interesting feature in this wall is the Flemish bond detail. As you can see, the headers are red brick and the stretchers are buff brick. Originally, this whole building had its mortar joints finished with traditional English tuckpointing. We did not recreate this finish given the added labour and expense involved. We evenly distributed the reclaimed brick throughout the wall in an attempt to keep the original aesthetic alive. The clients were very happy with the result as were we. These types of projects are very rewarding.

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