“Watch out for the bees, man,” said the chimney guy on his way up the ladder past my door. He and another were inspecting brick along the roof through which rain had leaked, ruining books and other things in my apartment.
Outside my landlady was standing by. Looking up with her, I couldn’t help recognize brick, lots of it. Much of aging
And all of it must be periodically tuck-pointed. That’s because the grout between bricks eventually erodes. If you ride the L through Chicago, which gives you an uninterrupted opportunity to look, all that Chicago brick has been tuck pointed. The two-flat in which I live is no exception, and I mentioned that to my landlady.
“Keep that up, and the brick lasts forever,” she said.
“Tuck pointing
“Good for the next eight centuries,” I added.
That’s because the Anasazi pueblo people of the Colorado Plateau were laying brick, shaped into rectangles from sedimentary rock, for their housing in the twelfth century. These primitive masons glued together their cliff dwellings with plaster of mud, chinked with smaller stones, an ancient form of tuck pointing. Cliff dwellings from Mesa Verde to Hovenweep astound people to this day for their endurance.
Before tuck pointing
After excavation and tuck pointed in the ancient manner
I was just talking about tuckpointing yesterday with my brother. I tuckpointed our chimney here in Canada the end of last summer and had to inspect how it held up through the winter. This morning I am unbelievably enjoying a fire in the same fireplace though it is the 15th of July. : )
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