The beauty of remodeling is that you think you are done with one job, only to find out that you are not.

I proclaimed that we had taken care of the basic masonry repair in the basement and around the windows. That was before I took a close look at the window sills of the two basement bathroom windows.

The sills, once one nice piece of carved limestone, were pointing and sloping in all sorts of directions, and were a lit wobbly and cracked into three pieces. A situation that was incompatible with the installation of new windows.

I still had salvaged limestone sills in the yard from a nearby tear-down that I could use for the replacement. First, though, I had to remove a lot of concrete that was poured all along the western edge of the house, presumably to keep water away from the foundation wall.

Removing the old sill pieces was comparatively easy. I also removed some of the loose limestone from the foundation wall under the sills and mortared them back into place. This should provide the sills with a firm footing. Last but not least, I fitted and placed the new sills, making sure that they were level across the window, but had a slight slope outward into the yard.

Does that conclude the masonry repairs? I am afraid not. The list of minor and major masonry repair works is still growing.

The old window bars, which are let into the masonry wall, have rusted so much that they have begun to push the brick work out. We would like to install new bars and at that time repair the brick around the outside window opening.

We also have the issue with the cement parging around the bottom of the house. The parging covered up water-damaged brick, which actually made the problem even worse because it prevents the masonry from drying out. We would like to remove the parging  and replace all the water-damaged brick.

Then there is the foundation wall that we will need to re-point once we start excavating for the footing drain and insulation. Cathy and I know that we will not shoulder that task again but will have a pro on the job.

Repairing the masonry work on the inside around the hole in the wall – namely the one added basement window – is less than half the story. Dealing with the exterior repairs is much more interesting.

All original windows have proper stone window sills. This one had not. It was half-heartedly set on the limestone foundation wall with plenty of nooks and crevices for critters, water and air to get in and out.

I fixed that by removing some of the limestone to make room for a salvaged cut stone sill.

Then, as with the inside, I deconstructed the edges around the window back to the original brick work and rebuilt it from there with salvaged brick and the right type of mortar.

The work around this added window was bad, but at least it was consistently bad.

The window had no header on the inside, nor on the outside. Adding the outside header was a little involved.

We took our cues from the architecture around the original windows, which all have a two layered segmental brick arc. This construction is structurally super sound, and something that has been used for centuries. Just think of arched cathedral ceilings.

To install my modest arc header, I build a template that I fitted into the window opening. It allowed me to mortar in place the two segmental brick arches. Once the mortar was cured – a couple of days later – the template could go.

From the removal of the original windows to the small masonry repairs at every window, this was a bigger task and accomplishment, which we began to refer to as our little l’arc de triumph.

I like to think that its sustainable impact could also be somewhat triumphant. So many thinks that are done or that we do around our buildings are often executed with so little thought, which can lead to long term damage rather than adding to the longevity of a structure. It is about the other side of green.

I removed the old basement windows and now have repair work in the masonry opening ahead of me. There is some moisture damage to take care of as well as filling the recesses of the old wooden window sill and head in the top and bottom corners.

One of the windows is an unusual case and requires a little more tender-loving care.

We discovered during our basement deconstruction that it is not an original window, but had been added sometime later.

This is a curse as well as a blessing as with most other things that had been added later in this building. We don’t mind having the extra window in the basement, but we now have to deal with shoddy masonry work around the edges, which was done with the wrong mortar. But worst of all, this window had no header and thus no support for the two floor joists. Instead, they were just resting on the window jambs – not something you can call a structurally sound solution.

That said, this setup obviously has worked for a number of years. Nevertheless, I got increasingly nervous each time I looked at the window and decided quickly to shore up the non-supported floor joists.
I now could safely remove the shoddy masonry work around the window edge, deconstructing everything back to the original brick work.

After everything was cleaned out, I began to rebuild the masonry opening with salvaged common brick and the right mortar (type O). I finished the job by crowning the window with a 4 by 6 old growth header, the same kind of header we have over all other basement windows. This set-up has a 100+ year successful track record … enough to convince us that this is the way to put it back together.

This takes care of the inside work. Next step is to get the outside part of the window fixed.