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Full Version: Take it out, put it in!
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Although I've been out of the masonry business for 8 years now, some of my old clients keep calling me. So this is what I did this past weekend for a couple of bucks. Nice weekend for it and it's going to get hot as blazes the next two weeks so I'm glad I got it done. I love these little hit and run jobs! Enjoy.

Ed/ODF
Looks like you still know thing or two about masonry. Nice job, glad you could make a little extra and help your old clients out too.
Great job Ed.  But I have a question did you cut it out or just acid wash the areas shown.
Clean neat work Ed. It must be nice to have a way to make a few extra bucks here and there and keep yourself in the game at the same time. Masonry is a true craft and an art too.  Now get out and do a little dirt fishing!
(07-10-2016 07:04 PM)scott demont Wrote: [ -> ]Great job Ed.  But I have a question did you cut it out or just acid wash the areas shown.

Cut it out first. With a thick diamond blade on a Metabo angle grinder. Then rinse it all down to get all the dust and debris out. Then put it all back. Then acid wash it the next day with a 4:1 Muriatic acid mix and a brush akin to a tire scrubber. Gets all the stains off. I was in a hurry so I boarded this wall because I knew I was acid washing it. Some of the joints took a whole board. I used 2 bags (160 #'s) of Quickrete Type S mason's mix. Great stuff. Nice and sticky. In the business we call it mortar with training wheels. The joints for the first seven courses were soft. Above that they got hard as granite. This is what cloride does to mortar over the years from using rock salt as a deicer on the drives and walkways.

Ed

(07-10-2016 08:05 PM)shadeseeker Wrote: [ -> ]Clean neat work Ed. It must be nice to have a way to make a few extra bucks here and there and keep yourself in the game at the same time. Masonry is a true craft and an art too.  Now get out and do a little dirt fishing!

Thanks shade! Restoration masonry is sometimes truly an art. But I don't do this as often as I'd like as I'm a touch over the hill for daily work like this. Saturday night I had an icepack on my right shoulder for three hours before the pain subsided. Of course the ice came from the same cooler I keep the beer in so I really can't remember exactly how long. Chuckle

But it's one of the trademarks of being in the restoration trades (not necessarily beer drinking) because of the tools you use constantly and the situations you must endure to get the job done correctly. We had a phrase in my end of the masonry trade and it was, "If you can't see the work I've done, I did my job.". There were plenty of times when I'd look at the work I and some of my team did and think, "Holy Crap! Where did we work?". And if you didn't record photographic progress of the job, you couldn't go back and find it!!! When I worked in NYC and the burbs there, for other companies, every rig on the wall had a camera and a notebook. Film in those days. Part of the job was to record the work done. Even more so with the historic restorations. There it was mandatory!

This client of mine is the best. This guy is such a jokester and funny guy but wants to chat and shoot the bull more than watch me work. If I told you some of the jokes he told me, I'd get banned. You don't see it in the photos but I had him sweeping up and doing all the bs work to get him out of my hair so I could go home before dark! He's well intentioned and one helluva person. I put 2 extensions on 2 of his many buildings years ago just like they were built as original. Do a great job, make them happy, make a buck. Clients for life!

Don't know about the dirt fishing. We're hitting the 90's starting Wednesday and it looks like the next 2 weeks are going to be a scorcher. May go out tomorrow. Only going to be 86F tops. Shoulder okay today though. Strange. Maybe it's all the Glucosamine MSM I take.

Ed
Did the ice take away the pain or the beer .....Beer
Looks like a fine job.
Pat
Terrific job, Ed. It's looks like it blends in perfectly.
Now I know why my motor under the first step turned soft.
I cleaned it out and used a quick tube of mortar fix that I bought at lowes. I will have to go back and redo a few more of the top steps due to cracking. But I'll use real mortar and mix it myself probably this fall.
Like you, my back was kicking my ass for two days afterward, beer didn't help but it's part of the expierance.
Very nice work Ed! It's always great to know a few trades. Keep getting that $$$ but don't forget about the shiny goodies! Best of luck when ya get out there and stay cool YesBeer
You did a helluva job Yes Good way to make some extra bread if times are tough. Read an article the other day that said the trades are suffering now, since most of the younger generation either doesn't want to work much, or, when they do, it's mostly office/computer type of work, due to the internet age we live in. Nothing wrong with that of course, but a lot of jobs that previous generations did, which took getting one's hands dirty and a lot of grit, are very tough to fill nowadays.

Joe
(07-11-2016 08:32 PM)Bigtony Wrote: [ -> ]Terrific job, Ed. It's looks like it blends in perfectly.
Now I know why my motor under the first step turned soft.
I cleaned it out and used a quick tube of mortar fix that I bought at lowes. I will have to go back and redo a few more of the top steps due to cracking. But I'll use real mortar and mix it myself probably this fall.
Like you, my back was kicking my ass for two days afterward, beer didn't help but it's part of the expierance.

Pain in my trade Big T was an everyday occurrence. As a side note, very few used drugs in my profession and they who did in turn destroyed the passion for the work and the trade. OSHA has tried to make some changes, but to get it right, the work, as is, has to be done by the strength of bone and muscle. I feel your pain, and sorry to use that analogy. We are biological machines. I was on jobs where the young guys coming in asked where the mixer was. I had to tell them they were the biological mixer. In many cases, because we couldn't have the noise the real mortar mixers would make in the location we were in. And sometimes, we didn't need that, because we had veterans of the masonry business and they knew the ropes. But in a way you now know why I keep moving, either on the soccer job or on the trails in the woods or crawling over logs in the woods. I have to keep moving. It's the only thing I can do to keep the pain at bay. And it works! Okay, I take 1000 mg of Acetaminophen a day. But I keep moving. Because it feels good! Never stop moving Big T. When you stop, eventually..........

Ed
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