Hello,
I am going to take down the facade bricks (standard bricks on a 70s villa). I need to reuse these bricks elsewhere on the house (moving windows).
Does anyone know the best method for taking them down and cleaning the mortar?
/Jörgen
I am going to take down the facade bricks (standard bricks on a 70s villa). I need to reuse these bricks elsewhere on the house (moving windows).
Does anyone know the best method for taking them down and cleaning the mortar?
/Jörgen
It probably depends entirely on the quality of the mortar. If you're unlucky, it's almost impossible to remove the stones whole, but with a bit of luck, it will probably work great with a rubber mallet and crowbar.
To get the stones clean, a manual scraping job is likely necessary.
To get the stones clean, a manual scraping job is likely necessary.
When taking down bricks, it's just like MathiasS writes. If successful, you can clean the brick by holding the brick in your hand and with a well-aimed strike with a mason's hammer, hit precisely between the mortar and brick, and maybe larger lumps of mortar will fall off. Something that might also work is scraping the mortar against a boot scraper that is usually outside the front door.
A really tough job that probably works better on older bricks where old lime mortar has been used, as it often crumbles more easily.
A really tough job that probably works better on older bricks where old lime mortar has been used, as it often crumbles more easily.
