Here’s another do-it-yourself home repair how-to. It’s been a real while since I wrote one. If you have happen to have any brick work in your home then you may probably want to read on.

Brick work may be done for you walls, chimney, or sometimes floors. Bricks look nice and rustic but the thing about them is mortar that holds them together cracks and crumbles after time especially when exposed to weather and temperature changes.

While getting an expert is the easiest way to do repairs, it may not be the cheapest. Besides, you can repair crumbled mortar by yourself, just follow these simple tips.

Decide on a patch

You can always go with good old mortar for patch jobs. However, vinyl cement is now available. It saves you the trouble of mixing and trying to get the right formulation of mortar. However, vinyl cement rarely matches the look of mortar.

Clean out the old mortar

Chip out the mortar with a screwdriver. Clean out the grooves at a depth of about an inch. If you encounter hard spots, you can use a star drill to do the job. Make sure you clean out loose bits and pieces of the old mortar. The patch wouldn’t hold too good if there are still loose crumbs in there.

Apply the patch

Vinyl cement is applied using a caulking gun. Just follow the instructions very carefully. If using mortar, a good recipe is as follows: 1 part cement, 1/2 part lime putty, 4 parts fine sand. Mix them together until they create a uniform color. Add water slowly until you get a mass that’s smooth to slide of a trowel held at an angle but sticky enough to stick to a trowel held upside down.

Apply the mortar

Wet the bricks and keep them wet as you work. Apply the mortar using a trowel making sure that the joints and creases are filled. Sweep off any extra using your trowel.

“Strike” with the pattern

Mortar in between bricks sometimes have a pattern on how its pressed inside the brick joints whether it’s rounded down or have some edges. Just follow the same pattern as the rest of the brick work.

Keep the area damp

Keep it damp for about 2-3 days by spraying it with some water once in a while.