Tuckpointing, Stone, and Brick Repair in Centerville, Ohio

Tuckpointing in Centerville runs $8 to $20 per square foot, stone repair $15 to $40 per square foot, limestone sills $300 to $1,200 each, and chimney repointing $800 to $2,500, on the same published scale as the rest of our service area. Centerville is about six miles south of Dayton and has two kinds of masonry that could not be more different: the oldest stone buildings in Ohio, and postwar brick veneer. Send photos and we tell you which mortar your wall needs.

What Centerville is

Centerville was first surveyed in February 1796 by Aaron Nutt, Benjamin Archer, and Benjamin Robbins, three brothers-in-law who came from New Jersey by way of Pennsylvania and Kentucky, and it had 24,421 residents at the 2020 census. It sits in Washington Township in the southern half of Montgomery County, with a small portion in Greene County. The city’s claim to fame is stone: it describes itself as home to Ohio’s largest collection of early stone buildings, and at one point in the 19th century nearly 100 stone buildings stood there. The survivors are concentrated in the historic Uptown area, where brick sidewalks run past limestone storefronts and houses, many of them listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Around that core, Centerville grew the way Kettering did: postwar ranches, split-levels, and two-stories in brick veneer, and newer subdivisions south toward the county line.

Two kinds of masonry, two kinds of mortar

The stone buildings. Centerville’s early stone was laid in lime mortar by people who had nothing else. Preservation Brief 2 places limestone and durable stone in its moderately durable class and recommends Type K in sheltered exposures, Type O in moderate, and Type N in severe, all softer than the Type S in a hardware-store bag. Its own example of a bad repointing job is a hard Portland test patch on an early-19th-century stone foundation. Stone repointing in Centerville means sampling the original mortar, matching the sand, choosing a lime-based mix, packing it in lifts, and finishing the joints slightly recessed so the stone reads as stone. Where a sill, lintel, or quoin has spalled, the order is patch, then Dutchman, then replacement in kind. The stone page covers all of it, and the Miamian clay under the county, with its spring water table 2.5 to 3.5 feet down, is why the foundations of these buildings need the foundation repointing treatment from the inside every few generations.

The postwar brick. Everything else in Centerville is hard machine-made brick veneer over frame, laid in Portland-lime mortar that Type N matches. The failures are the standard mid-century set: steel lintels set without flashing that rust, swell, and open a stair-step crack from the window corner; rowlock sills that lose their joints; and single-flue chimneys built with a mortar wash on top that cracks within a few winters. Ohio’s roughly 110 freeze-thaw cycles a year and 41.33 inches of annual precipitation drive all three. The lintel page explains why repointing a step crack does not hold, and the chimney page covers the cast crown that should replace the wash.

What fails first in Centerville

• Chimney crowns, on every era. The wash cracks, water enters the top courses, and the joints go from the top down. A crown with a drip edge at $400 to $1,200 is the best money on the house.
• Lintels on the north and west faces of veneer houses.
• Stone sills and water tables on the old buildings, delaminating along their bedding planes where the drip groove has been painted shut.
• Field-wall joints under failed gutters, straightforward repointing on the brick houses and a matched lime job on the stone.

Permits and who does the work

Centerville runs its own Building Department. It registers electrical, fuel gas piping, HVAC, and plumbing contractors every year and requires a state license for each of those trades, which tells you the important thing: masonry is not on the list, because Ohio issues no masonry license and Centerville, like every jurisdiction in the county, does not register masons. Washington Township outside the city limits falls under Montgomery County Building Regulations. Repointing and brick or stone repair in kind are maintenance. A rebuilt chimney or a replaced lintel can need a permit, and we confirm with the city before starting. Repairs arranged through this site are performed by insured Ohio masonry contractors.

Centerville’s Uptown stone buildings are on the National Register, and National Register listing alone does not trigger review of private work. If a building carries a local designation or an easement, we ask before the first joint is cut.

Timing and quotes

Lime mortar on stone is the most weather-sensitive work we do: it wants wall temperatures between 40 and 95 degrees, misting, and cover while it carbonates. With Dayton’s average last spring freeze on April 16 and first fall freeze on October 25, the stone season is May through early October, and the brick season a little longer at each end. Send a wide shot of the elevation, a close-up of the worst joint or the worst stone with a coin for scale, and a photo of the chimney top. The number comes from the pricing page; the mortar questions are on the FAQ. Neighbors in Kettering and Oakwood are on the same run.