A brick wall never fails where you can see it. The crack you notice at the surface started years earlier, somewhere in the mortar or the footing — a base that was never set below the frost, a joint that was never tooled tight, water that found a soft spot and kept working at it through every freeze.
Nickel Masonry exists for the part of the job nobody photographs: the footing, the right mortar mix, the dead-level first course, the joints struck to shed water. It is patient, exacting work — and skipping it is expensive in a way you won't see for a few winters.
So we dig the footing below the frost line, mix the mortar for the brick or stone, lay each course plumb and to the line, and tool the joints to keep water out of the wall. Then we strike it clean, brush it down, and walk the finished work with you.
Where the whole wall either keeps water out or it doesn't — placeholder photo, to be swapped for a real project shot.
A good wall is a quiet thing. You stop noticing the leaning chimney, the damp patch behind the brick, the stones that have worked loose. That quiet is the entire point — and it's what a properly set footing and a tight joint buy you, one season after another.
