A DIY repair on a brick sidewalk.

A sidewalk that was done badly, needs a repair to be safe and stop further degradation! I used a factory mixed mortar mix, mixed a little stiff.

Resulting sidewalk and steps: Solid, but still drying. We just stepped of into the grass temporarily, to wait for it to dry.

Another view: This is post repair, with joints filled in with mortar.

The process is Not hard, you just need to do a few things in sequence.first, you need to find the bricks that are loose. These bricks must be removed, and cleaned off; and set aside in the same pattern as removed. The location is then cleaned of loose mortar and all other debris. It must be scraped chipped, Brushed, the and washed Clean. The be last part is most important, because it removed debris and dirt which damages bonding; and pre-moistens the surface, to recieved the mortar. Without this pre-moistening the surface, the mortar will dry at the surface due to wicking; which destroys the bond strength.

Next, you need to cover contact surfaces with mortar using a process called buttering. In masonry, mounting depends on filling any gap between two surfaces with mortar before placing on the loose unit to be mounted. Normally, the sides are buttered too, but this sidewalk was laid out with excessively wide mortar joints, and that much mortar can't stay in place. So to repair this sidewalk, I need to butter them down, then fill the joints from the top.

Initially, only the outside brick had moved underfoot: Then I found the full sized loose brick. I then decided to repair cracks in the mortar to keep out water, to reduce ice damages.

The resulting repair looked good: I decided to see if other bricks were loose, found some and removed and cleaned as before.

These have been buttered and set: I like to stand on the brick being placed, to move it down into position. If I have trouble I rotate my foot slightly, back and forth. If it won't quite move down far enough, I put in a wooden block on the brick; and drive it with a hammer! When the brick is in the right position, it is considered set (placed in the final locations)!

I then found some loose bricks on the step: A step that is loose Can move under load, and dump someone off; kind of like bull riding without the fun.... These half a dozen bricks were removed, cleaned and buttered into place. I sealed more mortar cracks by simply forcing mortar into the cracks using my trowel to repeatedly push mortar down into the old joint. This made a new mortar bond, and sealed out the water at the same time.

Here is a full view of the bricks removed: About a third of the step surfaces were loose, and had to be removed and repaired as described above. Once totally mortared back in place, including the right most corner block; we have a repaired walkway.

A couple of notes, if I were doing this from scratch; I would use smaller joints. I would also add metal tie straps, to go inside the mortar itself to anchor the bricks and the mortar mechanically to the substrate underneath! If you wet the bonding surface, you can run a dryer mix which is easier to control. Don't be afraid to try this, you can always scrape it out; and redo what you don't like the looks of....

But I was forced to copy their brick placement, to make the new sidewalk match the old. But I was able to effect a water seal, to help this walk last a lot longer.

Final pictures: I like the way this turned out! I'd have done it differently, but this is solid, and looks nice.

Also: This one beats the previous sidewalk, with no bricks shifting underfoot.

I Hope you liked my little brick repair, and I would like to see you try it too!