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A brick rambler that went up off Liberty Road in 1958 is coming up on seventy, and that number explains more than the house does. Mortar joints, chimney crowns and concrete stoops all have service lives in roughly that same range, so a house built in one season tends to need three separate repairs inside one decade. Multiply that by a street finished the same year and you have a good part of Randallstown right now. Charm City Masonry works throughout Baltimore County, and this corner of the northwest side keeps us busy. We are licensed, insured and bonded.
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Randallstown sits about 11.5 miles west-northwest of downtown Baltimore in Baltimore County, and nearly everything we repair here was built in the twentieth century. The town itself is far older. It grew up in the 1700s around a tavern serving travelers on Liberty Road, opened by English brothers Thomas and Christopher Randall, and Liberty Road (MD 26) is still the main artery through 21133. But the population was only 100 in 1880, so the village era left almost no masonry behind. There is no historic district here. Choate House, listed on the National Register in 1989, is an individual listing.
What got built came later, and fast. The 1950s and 1960s account for roughly 40 percent of the housing stock, with a second wave in the 1980s. That means mid-century brick ramblers, split-levels, Cape Cods and brick-veneer colonials, plus groups of 1970s and 1980s townhomes. Drive Winands Road, or the streets off Liberty Road near Randallstown High School and Northwest Hospital, and you see the same five or six masonry details repeated a few thousand times. That is why masonry in Randallstown, MD is so predictable from the curb: the brick mason in Randallstown, MD you call about a cracked stoop will usually spot the crown and the pointing on the same visit.
Geography supplies the rest. Northwestern Baltimore County is rolling Piedmont, so these lots were graded rather than flat, and the split-level was the answer. Split-levels bring partial-height foundation walls, walk-out basements, and grade changes at driveways and side yards, which is where site walls come in. One more piece of local history worth knowing: Randallstown was once the planned terminus of the Baltimore Metro Subway, and the line was built to Owings Mills instead. The MTA still runs routes 54 and 77 through here, and the housing along them is all reaching the same age.
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Here is the work we do most often in 21133, ordered by what these houses need. One crew covers the list, so a masonry contractor in Randallstown, MD who comes out for the stoop can check the joints and chimney on the same trip.
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Steps and stoops lead the list because they are the highest-volume job here. A stoop takes sixty-plus winters of salt at grade, then fails from the bottom up: treads crack, risers spall (the face flakes off in sheets), the slab tips toward the house. Cracked concrete steps in Randallstown, MD are often repairable if the base is sound.
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Most brick repair in Randallstown, MD is localized: the bottom courses where salt spray lands, cracked brick over a rusting lintel, stair-step cracks where the ground moved. We cut out failed units and set matched replacements, hunting size, color and texture, because a bad match shows from the street forever.
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Repointing means cutting failed mortar out of the joint to a sound depth and packing in fresh. Brick repointing in Randallstown, MD starts on the south and west elevations, where sun and driven rain work hardest. Tuckpointing is the finish version, shaped and colored to match, and on a street of near identical houses, tuckpointing in Randallstown, MD has to be right.
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The crown is the flat concrete roof at the top of the stack, and on a mid-century house it goes first. Chimney repair in Randallstown, MD means rebuilding that crown with a real overhang, fitting a cap, resetting the roofline flashing and repointing what water washed out. If the stack is out of plumb, we rebuild from the roof up.
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A retaining wall in Randallstown, MD is really a drainage project with a face on it. Gravel backfill, a drain line and weep holes (openings that let trapped water out from behind the wall) do the work; fill alone washes out. Above a certain height a wall needs a permit and engineered design, and we say so before building your wall or site steps.
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Driveways and aprons are the same age as the stoops and fail the same way. Concrete repair in Randallstown, MD often means replacing failed sections rather than the whole slab, the cheaper honest answer when the rest is sound. As your concrete contractor in Randallstown, MD we also do garage pads and patios.
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Plenty of fronts here carry a stone veneer panel, a chimney face or a low garden wall. A stone mason in Randallstown, MD works slower than a bricklayer because every unit is a one off, and we repoint, reset and rebuild it. Charm City Masonry also takes on commercial masonry along the Liberty Road corridor.
Not sure what you are looking at? Send us a photo and we will tell you what it is. Call (410) 844-6510.
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If it feels like your house decided to come apart all at once, you are reading it correctly. A brick rambler built in 1958 is approaching seventy, and mortar joints, chimney crowns and concrete flatwork all have service lives in roughly that band. They went in the same month and aged through the same winters. That is why a whole street tends to need masonry repair in Randallstown, MD in the same decade rather than one house at a time.
On a mid-century brick house, five things typically arrive together:
The useful part is the order. Fix what is letting water in first: crown, cap, flashing and gutters. Then repoint. Then do the flatwork. Repointing a wall that a failed gutter is still soaking is money spent twice, and new joints will not save brick that is being fed water from above. Our chimney repair and concrete flatwork pages cover both ends of that sequence.
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Weather does most of it, and this climate is unusually good at it. The Baltimore area takes roughly 45 inches of precipitation across about 121 wet days a year, plus around 19 inches of snow, and spends somewhere between 75 and 90 days below freezing. January averages about 34 degrees with lows near 25, the worst arrangement possible: a wall that freezes overnight and thaws every afternoon is worked far harder than one that stays frozen all winter.
Humidity keeps it wet. Relative humidity runs from about 59 percent in spring to 71 percent in early fall, so walls dry slowly and water in an open joint or a cracked crown has time to travel.
Then there is road salt, spread by the ton every winter and tracked onto the surfaces these houses put at grade: stoops, steps, walks, aprons and the bottom courses of brick. Chloride drives subflorescence, salt crystallizing inside the pore structure rather than on the face, and that spalls brick and concrete faster than freezing alone. It is why the bottom of your stoop looks worse than the top.
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Randallstown sits in the middle of the northwest side, and we work the whole area. Northwest on Liberty Road, masonry work in Owings Mills is mostly 1970s through 1990s brick veneer over frame, which fails through ties, weep holes and shelf angles rather than through worn joints. South of here, masonry repair in Woodlawn deals with 1940s and 1950s brick rows and duplexes sitting right at repointing age. Carry on into Baltimore City rowhouse country and the brick gets older and softer again. You can also read more about Charm City Masonry.
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Free estimate
Every job is different, and the only accurate number comes from an on-site look, which is why estimates are free. We keep a clean jobsite, we are respectful of your property, and we stand behind our work. Call (410) 844-6510, or send the form below and we will come out and tell you what you have.
