Linear feet of joint, mortar bags, grinder wheels and cost to repoint a brick wall.
Estimates are planning aids, not a professional quote. Double-check quantities and product coverage — and any local code or permit requirements — before you buy.
⚠ Grinding out old mortar releases fine crystalline silica dust, a serious respiratory hazard even for a weekend job — use a grinder with a vacuum-shrouded dust collection attachment or wet-cut, and wear a properly rated respirator, not a paper dust mask.
| Finishing & Sealant | $258–$350 |
| Concrete & Footings | $95–$129 |
| Fasteners & Hardware | $20–$28 |
| Total | $374–$506 |
Excludes tools, delivery, tax and permit fees. Labor not included — this is a DIY materials estimate.
These are affiliate links: we may earn a commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you. It never changes what the calculator recommends — the shopping list comes from your dimensions, not from what pays.
About this calculator
Tuckpointing repairs the mortar joints in an existing brick wall, not the brick itself, and the quantity that actually drives the job is linear feet of joint, not square feet of wall. Enter the wall's face area, pick the brick size you're working with, and set how much of the face has cracked, crumbling or missing joints, and the calculator works out the raked joint footage from real brick coursing geometry, then sizes the diamond grinder wheels and repointing mortar it takes to redo it.
Brick size changes the math, since a bigger unit packs less joint into the same wall — modular brick carries about 50% more linear feet of joint per square foot than utility brick, so the same wall area is a different job depending on what it's built from. Choose whether the existing mortar is soft historic lime or modern Portland cement, since matching hardness matters, and toggle color-matched mortar plus a water-repellent sealer in the advanced panel.
Step by step
A step-by-step walkthrough to go with your plan above. Follow the product instructions and any local code or permit requirements as you work.
Tap every joint with a hammer handle and mark the ones that sound hollow, crumble, or are already missing mortar — sound joints that are just weathered don't need to be touched. This is what turns a guess into the deterioration percentage the calculator uses.
Mask windows, sills, siding and any landscaping below the wall with plastic sheeting before you start grinding or mixing — raked mortar dust and mortar splatter travel further than you'd expect and are much easier to prevent than to clean up after.
Grind out the marked joints to a consistent depth of about 2 to 2.5 times the joint width, using a shrouded grinder connected to a vacuum. Work in short sections and stop the moment you're cutting into brick instead of mortar.
Brush out all loose debris and dust with a stiff wire brush, then mist the raked joints with water before repointing. A dry, dusty joint pulls water out of the fresh mortar too fast and weakens the bond.
Mix a small batch to your chosen mortar and pigment ratio, pack it into an inconspicuous joint, and let it cure and dry fully before judging the color — mortar shifts noticeably in color as it cures, and a match made wet is rarely a match once it's dry.
Work fresh mortar into the raked joints in thin layers rather than one thick pack, compacting each layer with a pointing tool before adding the next. Tool the joint to match the wall's existing profile once it's firmed to a thumbprint.
Brush off mortar smears before they cure — a stiff brush handles fresh haze easily, but cured mortar smeared across brick faces often needs an acid wash to remove, which risks etching the brick itself.
Let the new mortar cure for the time your product specifies, keeping it damp if the weather is hot and dry, before applying a water-repellent sealer over the full wall face — new joints included.
Equip the job
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Keep planning
Concrete & Masonry
Answers
It's sized from the volume of the joints themselves, not the wall's square footage: raked depth times joint width times the total linear feet of joint being repointed. That linear footage is itself driven by brick size, since a bigger unit packs less total joint into the same wall face — a 500 sq ft wall in modular brick has meaningfully more joint to fill than the same wall in utility brick. This calculator works through both steps and rounds up to whole 50 lb bags, since that's how repointing mortar is actually sold.
Walk the face and look for joints that are cracked, crumbling, powdery to the touch, or missing mortar entirely — sound joints that just look weathered don't need to be redone. Tap the joints with a hammer handle; a hollow or crumbling sound means the mortar has failed even if it looks intact from a few feet away. Most homes need somewhere between a quarter and half the face redone rather than the whole wall, which is why this calculator asks for a percentage rather than assuming every joint is bad.
Repointing is grinding or raking out deteriorated mortar to a consistent depth and packing new mortar into the joint — that's what this calculator prices. Tuckpointing, strictly, is a decorative technique layered on top of repointing where a thin, precise line of contrasting putty is struck into the fresh mortar to imitate very fine, uniform historic joints. Most people use the two terms interchangeably for the repair itself, which is how this page uses it too, but if you want the decorative fine-line finish it takes extra time and a narrower tool.
Only if the wall was built with modern Portland-cement mortar to begin with. Brick homes built before roughly the 1930s were usually laid with a soft lime-based mortar that's meant to be weaker than the brick and wear first, protecting the brick over time. Patching that kind of wall with hard modern mortar reverses the relationship — the repair becomes stronger than the brick, traps moisture behind it, and the brick faces spall off as that moisture freezes. Match the mortar to the wall's age and hardness, not to what's easiest to find at a hardware store.
The standard rule of thumb is about 2 to 2.5 times the joint's width, which is deep enough for the fresh mortar to properly key into the joint without relying on a thin skin-coat that will pop off in a few years. For a typical 3/8-inch joint that's roughly 3/4 to 15/16 of an inch. Raking any deeper risks cutting into the brick edges themselves rather than just removing mortar, which weakens the wall instead of repairing it — this calculator flags that risk if your rake depth and joint width combination pushes past it.