Tuckpointing and Masonry Repair Pricing in Evansville, Indiana

Tuckpointing in Evansville costs $8 to $20 per square foot of wall, brick replacement $20 to $40 per brick, chimney repointing $800 to $2,500, a chimney rebuild from the roofline $2,500 to $7,000, foundation wall repointing $10 to $25 per square foot, lintel replacement $400 to $1,500 per opening, and limestone sill repair $300 to $1,200 each. Most crews carry a $500 to $800 minimum. Every number here is a working range for Evansville, Newburgh, Henderson, and the rest of the Tri-State, and the rest of this page explains what puts your job at the bottom or the top.

Why publish? Because “free estimate” without a number is a sales strategy. When nobody posts prices, the walk-through becomes a pitch and you cannot sanity-check a $12,000 chimney bid against anything. So here is the market as we see it.

The full price table

Tuckpointing: $8 to $20 per square foot

The range covers a proper repoint: joints ground or raked to at least 3/4 inch (the National Park Service’s Preservation Brief 2 calls for 2 to 2.5 times the joint width, or 1/2 to 1 inch on most brick), cleaned, dampened, packed in lifts, and tooled to the original profile. Hard post-war brick at ground level with a concave joint and Type N mortar sits at the bottom. Soft 1880s brick in Riverside or Bayard Park, hand-raked to protect the arrises, repointed in a lime-based mortar matched for color and sand, with a grapevine or beaded joint, from scaffolding, sits at the top. The tuckpointing page walks through every step.

Square footage is wall area, not floor area. A two-story elevation 30 feet wide and 20 feet tall is 600 square feet before windows come out, so $1,500 to $6,000 per elevation is the honest range for most Evansville houses, and a whole house of soft brick from scaffolding can run $15,000 to $30,000. Nobody enjoys that number, which is why we push spot repointing of the joints that are actually failing, usually the chimney, the parapet, the north wall, and the sills, instead of a whole-house job that is not needed.

The freeze-thaw tax. Evansville’s 1991-2020 normals count 92.6 nights a year at or below 32 degrees and only 15.5 days that stay frozen, so the wall cycles through freeze and thaw roughly 77 times a winter. An open joint closed in October prices at the bottom of the range. The same joint after one winter is deeper, and after three winters it has taken the brick face with it, and now it is a brick replacement job too.

Brick replacement: $20 to $40 per brick

Cutting out a spalled or cracked brick, sourcing a match in size, color, and texture from salvage or reproduction, setting it in matched mortar, and tooling the joints to blend. Modern brick with a catalog match is the bottom of the range. A hand-molded 1870s brick that has to come from a salvage yard, or be cut down from a whole unit to a half-brick veneer, is the top. Small spot repairs of a few units run $300 to $900 because the minimum and the mortar match dominate. Above a few dozen units on one elevation, ask whether the mortar behind the spall is the real problem, because it usually is.

Chimneys: where most Evansville masonry money goes

• Repointing, $800 to $2,500. Joints above the roofline ground and repacked, usually with a new cap and counter-flashing check.
• Crown replacement, $400 to $1,200. A cast concrete crown with a drip edge overhanging the brick, not a mortar wash, which cracks in a season.
• Rebuild from the roofline, $2,500 to $7,000. When more than about a third of the brick above the roof is spalled, repointing is throwing money at brick that will keep failing. The chimney comes down to the roofline and goes back up in matched brick with a new crown, flashing, and cap.
• Full rebuild from the firebox, $8,000 to $20,000. Rare, and only when the stack is leaning, the interior is failing, or the whole thing was built badly to begin with.

The chimney page explains how to tell which one you need from the ground.

Foundations and basement walls: $10 to $25 per square foot

Evansville’s older neighborhoods sit on brick and stone foundations, the Ohio River has been above the 42-foot flood stage 41 times since 1940 by the Levee Authority’s count, and the water table in the river blocks and along Pigeon Creek is real. Repointing a foundation from the inside means working in a basement with hand tools, often in short sections, and from the outside it means excavation, so the per-foot number is higher than above-grade work. Typical jobs land between $2,000 and $8,000. See foundation and basement wall repointing for the inside-versus-outside decision.

Lintels, sills, and limestone

• Steel lintel replacement, $400 to $1,500 per opening. The rusted angle iron over a window or door comes out, the brick above is shored and reset, and a new galvanized lintel goes in. Step cracks over openings are this job wearing a mortar costume. Read lintel and sill replacement before accepting a repointing quote for a stepped crack.
• Limestone sill repair or reset, $300 to $1,200 each. Indiana limestone sills are everywhere in Evansville’s 1880s to 1950s housing, and the Salem Limestone they are cut from is calcium carbonate that acid rain and freeze-thaw slowly eat. A cracked sill can often be pinned and patched; a sill that has lost its slope or its drip has to come out and be reset or replaced.
• Stone repair, $15 to $40 per square foot. Patching, Dutchman repairs, and repointing on limestone and rubble stone. Details on the stone and limestone page.

What moves the number

• Mortar type. Lime-based mortar for pre-1930 brick costs more in material and time, and it is not optional. Hard Portland mortar on soft brick spalls the face; the Indiana DNR’s brick guidance and Preservation Brief 2 both say the new mortar must be softer and more permeable than the brick.
• Access and height. Ground-level work off a ladder is cheap. A three-story Riverside elevation or a chimney above a steep slate roof means scaffolding or a lift, and that is real money.
• How far the water got. Mortar loss alone is the bottom of every range. Mortar loss plus spalled brick plus a rusted lintel is the top, and the difference is usually a couple of winters of waiting.
• Historic review. In the Riverside Preservation Area the Historic Preservation Commission reviews conspicuous exterior changes to historic buildings, and the District Guidelines list masonry as a reviewed project with staff-level and commission-level tiers. Matched repointing is usually ordinary maintenance under city code 2.106.100, but a staff letter confirming that takes a little time and the quote accounts for it.
• Permits. Evansville and Vanderburgh County license masons locally through the Building Commission, and where a scope needs a permit (structural lintel work, chimney rebuilds in some jurisdictions) the fee is passed through at cost. Henderson, Kentucky requires a city specialty license for masonry work even without a permit.
• Season. Mortar cannot be placed below 40 degrees and falling. With the average last freeze on April 6 and the average first freeze on October 29 per NWS Paducah, the honest window is April through November. Winter work under heated enclosures typically adds 15 to 30 percent.
• The service minimum, $500 to $800. Not padding. Even a small proper repoint means a crew, a mortar match, and cure time. Beat it by batching: chimney plus sills plus the north wall in one visit is how small jobs get bought efficiently.

How to use these numbers

Send photos: one wide shot per elevation, a close-up of the worst joints with a coin for scale, the chimney from the ground, and any crack over a window. Compare bids by scope, not by total: depth of grind, mortar type named on the quote, joint profile, and whether the crown is cast or washed. A low bid that does not say how deep the joints will be ground or what mortar goes in is not cheaper; it is a different, worse product. And ask for the local license and insurance certificate. Evansville requires a $25,000 bond and $300,000 in liability coverage for a brick and masonry contractor license, and any bidder should produce both without being asked twice.

If you want your wall priced against this table, send the photos. If the honest answer is “the field of the wall is fine, it is the chimney and two sills,” that is the answer you will get. The FAQ covers the process questions and about us covers who does the work.