Ye Olde Red Brick House

The RH side of my porch looks so amazing! Well worth what I'm paying. As soon as he found out I put everything on a credit card, he lowered my bill to $3,000. I get to make payments on the $500 that wasn't paid with the credit card. :)   The mason put a steel bar in the center of the corner column and inserted into the cement footer. This side of the porch is very sturdy now! And I love it so much better without the ugly white lattice!   Now I need to get this $3,000 paid off so I can get the LH side repaired next year!     If you notice the little brick towards the LH center, it's a drain hole. Whenever I wash the porch, I can remove the brick so the water flows out instead of going down under the porch. 

The mason company started working on my porch today!     I came home from work so I could help with some of the scraping of plaster and mortar... I scraped for 4 hours so I could save a little money.  

I did not put much thought into how much maintenance and repair would go into owning a brick home. It's time to get my porch repaired. Both corner columns are shifting because there is no cement footer under the corner. It does not help that a lot of the bricks need tuck pointed. I called 3 different masons within 3 days, no one called me back. One mason company has a very good reputation in town, so I was a little persistent in leaving messages. After the 4th call, he finally answered! He came and checked my porch and gave me an estimate of $3,500. Ouch. I told him I'd let him know in a few days. I did a lot of praying. The day before I needed to let him know, a blank check from my credit card company came in the mail. :) I was able to write a check for $2,500 with 1.99% interest until December 2014. He's coming to repair my porch as soon as the check clears!