This great old house has eight original fireplaces (I added a ninth in the kitchen addition, so that at least one could be wood-burning) and two original chimneys. So, each chimney serves four fireplaces that back up to each other on each level of the house. The south chimney has been a worry ever since I bought the house, as
noted in this blog post from 2010. My fears about its weakness weren't driven only by the cracked, leaning appearance of it: sometimes I could hear it slowly self-destructing through the
sound of bricks falling down from inside.
Not only is the house over 100 years old, but the deterioration in the south chimney was likely accelerated by the fact that the old gas furnace was vented through it for a long time. I've also learned, within the last few weeks, that the north chimney has a cover but the south chimney has been open to the elements all this time. The mortar and the bricks have both been slowly turning to dust, and while the roof was replaced back in 2009, there were gaps around this chimney because the brick was too crumbled to make the flashing secure and sealed. Hence, leaking was a bad problem sometimes, as shown in
this blog post about the Van Gogh bedroom.
José Cruz came on the scene to help me get this chimney rebuilt and get both original chimneys re-stuccoed. The layout of the house and the placement of these chimneys made scaffolding no option, and it required a lift instead. That was fun for me, but also enlightening: it was awesome to be able to actually see the chimneys upclose and from above:
It was intriguing to find that the chimney is quartered to serve each fireplace independently (or was originally, although at the top of the chimney, most of those bricks had fallen down).
Ernesto Lopez was the mason who disassembled the chimney from the top down into the attic, to find a point of reasonable stability:
I sure was glad to see the work completed on this, which Ernesto did through the picture-perfect weekend of the Fourth of July:
Then came time for the stucco part:
Unfortunately, the detailing at the top did not match what was there previously, nor did it match the historical look. So I did a quick design illustration with unused bricks, to illustrate what the design should be.
José had his stucco worker correct it, though, without hesitation.
The finished look is a much lighter/whiter stucco treatment, but I'm pretty pleased overall. Mostly, I'm just glad that strong winds no longer bring about a fear of chimney collapse!
