How Much Does Tuckpointing Cost in St. Louis?
Tuckpointing in St. Louis typically runs $9 to $22 per square foot of wall, installed, reviewed September 2026. One elevation of a two-story brick flat usually lands between $3,000 and $9,000. Garage and porch walls you can reach off a ladder sit at the low end. Scaffolded upper walls, chimney stacks and lime mortar mixes push toward the top.
Masonry is one of the few trades where two honest bids on the same wall can sit thousands of dollars apart and both be fair. The difference is almost never the mortar. It is how much of the joint gets cut out, how the crew reaches the wall, and whether the quote covers one elevation or the whole building.
What does a square foot of tuckpointing actually buy?
When a wall is quoted at $14 per square foot, that number covers the full sequence on that area. Access gets set up. Failed joints are cut out to depth with a hand grinder or a chisel. Dust is blown clear and the joint is dampened. Mortar is mixed to an approved match, packed in layers, then tooled to the original profile once it takes a thumbprint. The wall gets washed down at the end.
Joint length is what drives the hours. A wall of small St. Louis common brick carries more linear feet of joint per square foot than a wall of oversized modern brick, so an 1890s two-family flat in Tower Grove and Shaw takes longer per square foot than a 1970s garage on the same street.
What are typical St. Louis masonry prices in 2026?
These are installed ranges for our market, reviewed September 2026. Treat them as a sanity check on a bid rather than a quote.
| Work | Typical range | What moves it |
|---|---|---|
| Tuckpointing, per sq ft | $9 to $22 | Access height, percentage of joints failing, mortar type |
| Chimney crown repair | $450 to $1,600 | Stack size, roof pitch, whether the top course needs resetting |
| Chimney rebuild above the roofline | $1,800 to $5,500 | Course count, flue liner condition, new flashing |
| Lintel replacement, per opening | $950 to $3,200 | Span, load above, whether the wall needs needling |
| Spalled brick replacement, per brick | $12 to $28 | Matching difficulty, height, how scattered the bricks are |
| Masonry waterproofing, per sq ft | $1.75 to $4.50 | Product, surface condition, number of coats |
Small jobs carry a minimum. Nobody sets a scaffold for forty dollars of mortar, so a handful of loose bricks at the third floor prices like a half day rather than like six bricks.
Why is the range so wide?
Five things account for most of the spread.
Access. A garage wall reached off an extension ladder and a third-floor gable behind a service drop are different jobs with the same mortar. Scaffold, lift rental and a tight gangway in Soulard can add 30 percent to a wall that would otherwise be routine.
How much of the joint has failed. Spot pointing 20 percent of a wall costs far less per square foot than 100 percent coverage, but it only makes sense when the sound joints are genuinely sound. If a key sinks into the mortar anywhere you test it, spot pointing is a temporary patch.
Mortar type. A bagged Type N mix is cheaper than a lime mix batched on site with matched sand and pigment. On soft pre-1930 common brick the lime mix is the correct call, and it costs more in both material and labor because it sets slowly and needs longer protection.
Brick condition. If the faces are already spalling, joints alone will not fix the wall. Cutting out and replacing brick is separate line-item work and should appear as its own count on the estimate.
Depth. The Park Service guidance on repointing is to cut the joint to roughly two to two and a half times its width, so a 3/8 inch joint gets raked back close to an inch. Shallow work is much faster and is the single most common reason a cheap bid is cheap.
How should an estimate be laid out?
Use this as a checklist when you compare bids.
- Each elevation priced separately, with the square footage stated
- Percentage of joints being pointed on each elevation
- The mortar type named, in words, including whether lime is in the mix
- Depth of cut stated in inches or as a multiple of joint width
- Joint profile named: concave, weathered, grapevine, flush
- Brick replacement counted as its own line with a per-brick price
- Who pulls the permit, and whether the fee is included
- Whether a cured color-match sample is approved before full work starts
- Wash down and daily cleanup written in
- Warranty term on labor, in writing
If a bid is a single number for “tuckpoint house,” you have no way to tell what was priced. Ask for the breakdown before you compare it to anything.
What does a cheap bid usually leave out?
Skim pointing is the classic one. Mortar gets smeared over the face of a failed joint without any of the old material being removed. It looks correct for a season. Because the new mortar has almost no depth to grip, it sheets off the first time the wall goes through a hard freeze, and the joint underneath is worse than when it started.
The other one is grinder damage. An angle grinder is a legitimate tool on straight horizontal bed joints. Run carelessly, or used on the short vertical head joints where it cannot fit, it widens the joint and cuts into the brick arris. You end up with fat joints and chipped brick edges that cannot be undone.
Do you need a permit, and does it cost anything?
In the City of St. Louis, tuckpointing is permitted work through the Building Division, and the permit application carries a small fee at the counter. Your contractor should pull it. If the building sits in a local historic district or is a City Landmark, the Cultural Resources Office also reviews the exterior work, and the district standards can govern the mortar mix, the joint profile and the tooling. Repointing is often approved over the counter, so this is usually days rather than weeks, but it needs to be in the schedule.
How do you stage the work over two seasons?
Most St. Louis buildings do not need every elevation at once. South and west walls take our weather and fail first. A common plan is to point the south and west faces this year, waterproof nothing until the mortar has cured, then take the north and east faces the following season. Pricing per elevation is what makes that possible, which is another reason to insist on it in the estimate.
Getting a real number for your building
Square-foot ranges only get you close. We walk the elevations, test joint depth, photograph the problem areas and send back a written scope with the mortar type named and each wall priced on its own line. You can see how we approach the work on our tuckpointing page, and the estimate is free whether you hire us or use it to check someone else’s bid.