Tuckpointing in Lincolnwood, IL

Lincolnwood carries two housing stories on the same block. It has the highest share of pre-1940 homes of any village we serve and the oldest median build year at 1958, so a lot of original brick has been sitting through Chicago's roughly 40 to 50 freeze-thaw cycles a winter for eighty years or more. At the same time, Lincolnwood also has the highest share of homes built since 2010 of the three suburbs, because teardown-rebuilds keep replacing older lots one at a time. We repoint both kinds of house, often on the same street.

Old brick, decades of freeze-thaw

On a pre-war or 1950s Lincolnwood home, we typically find the damage concentrated on north- and west-facing walls, where ice sits longest and mortar takes the worst beating. Original lime-based mortar in these homes is often softer than today's mixes, which actually matters: repointing with the wrong hard mortar can crack the brick faces around it instead of protecting them. We match mortar composition and joint profile to what is already on the wall before we touch it.

New construction, same physics

Lincolnwood's rebuilds tend to be large. The village has the largest median home size of the three suburbs at 6.6 rooms and the highest median home value at roughly $496,400, and that means more brick veneer per house. New veneer looks finished on day one, but the mortar joints behind it cure and settle like any other, and fast-build schedules are where we most often see thin or under-filled joints that need attention within the first several years. We inspect veneer condition as a standard part of any exterior estimate on newer Lincolnwood homes.

A compact village, fast scheduling

Lincolnwood is only 2.69 square miles, the smallest footprint of the three villages we serve, wrapped almost entirely by Chicago and Skokie. That means a mason wrapping up a job in the Terraces is minutes from an estimate in the Towers, so we can usually get someone out for a look within the week rather than stacking you behind a long route.

What tuckpointing costs in Lincolnwood

Spot repairs on a few problem joints typically run $50 to $500. A full tuckpointing job on brick walls runs in the $12 to $25 per square foot range regionally, which puts a full-wall job of around 500 square feet in the $6,000 to $12,500 range; Lincolnwood's larger homes tend to land toward the upper half of that simply because there is more wall. Chimney tuckpointing runs $500 to $2,500 for a standard job, more if the flue or crown needs rebuilding, and masonry labor in this region generally runs $50 to $100 an hour, which is folded into those per-square-foot numbers rather than billed as a separate line. Mortar needs temperatures roughly between 40 and 90 degrees to cure right, so the practical window for scheduling runs from about April through October, worth keeping in mind if you're weighing a repair now against waiting for spring. We give a firm number after a mason walks the exterior, not a phone estimate. See our full tuckpointing page for how we scope a job, and our chimney repair page if the damage is concentrated at the chimney.

Lintels and veneer

Homes built during Lincolnwood's 1940s to 1960s wave commonly have steel lintels over window and door openings, and rusting lintels are a frequent cause of the cracked brick we get called out for. If that is what we find, we walk you through our lintel replacement options rather than just repointing over a problem that will return.

Nearby areas

We also serve Niles and Morton Grove, both a short drive from Lincolnwood along Touhy and Dempster.

Lincolnwood tuckpointing questions

Do I need a permit to have my Lincolnwood home tuckpointed?

No. Under the Village's own Permits Required List for residential work, routine tuckpointing is not a permitted item. Two related jobs are, though: "Chimney Work/Repair, not Tuckpointing" and brick or stone veneer replacement. If your project is a straight mortar-joint repair, we handle it without a permit visit. If it turns into a chimney rebuild or a veneer swap, we tell you before we start and the paperwork goes through Community Development at 6900 Lincoln Avenue.

My house is one of the newer teardown-rebuilds. Do I still need this?

Later than your neighbors in an older home, but yes eventually. Lincolnwood has the highest share of homes built since 2010 of any suburb we serve, and new brick veneer still sits on mortar joints that cure and eventually need attention, especially where masons cut corners on a fast-build schedule. We check veneer condition on newer homes as part of any exterior estimate.

My home is one of Lincolnwood's older brick houses. What should I expect?

Lincolnwood has the highest share of pre-1940 homes of the three villages we cover, plus a median build year of 1958, older than Niles or Morton Grove. That means more decades of freeze-thaw cycling on original mortar. We typically find spalled brick faces and open joints concentrated on the north and west walls, where ice sits longest.