The Problem
This 1934 Tudor Revival in Park Ridge’s Country Club neighborhood had fourteen brick on the front facade with failed faces - the surface layer of the brick had fractured and separated. On a Tudor Revival, where the facade brick intentionally blends several tones and textures, the missing faces read as raw gray voids that stood out sharply against the remaining varied surface.
The home had also not been repointed in what appeared to be several decades. Joints across the front facade were receded an average of 5/8 inch, and the mortar visible in those joints was friable - it crumbled when probed with a screwdriver. Water was entering the wall cavity at multiple points along the front elevation.
Our Solution
We sourced replacement brick from a demolition salvage yard that carries pre-1940 Chicago-area brick. Tudor Revival homes use a blend of darker and lighter brick intentionally, so we pulled candidates in three tones that fell within the existing color range on this facade. After dry-staging the candidates against the wall under natural morning light, we confirmed the selection before ordering the full quantity.
The fourteen damaged brick were removed carefully. Each was cut free of its mortar bed before extraction to protect the surrounding brick. Replacement brick were set in a Type N lime-blend mortar, appropriate for the soft common brick of the 1930s.
The full front facade was then repointed - all joints ground to 3/4 inch depth, cleaned, and packed in two lifts. Joint color was matched to the warm gray-tan of the original mortar, sampled from inside the south window reveal where protected mortar was still intact.
The Result
The fourteen replacement brick disappear into the blended face of the Tudor facade as intended. No single replacement reads as a patch because the multi-tone brick style of Tudor Revival naturally accommodates some variation. The repointed mortar joints restored the front elevation to a sound, watertight condition. The owners remarked that the house had not looked this solid in their twenty years of ownership.
