Brick & Masonry Repair in Greater Boston

Half of masonry work in a city this old isn't building new — it's fixing what winter did to what somebody built before. After 37 years of it, we can usually tell you within five minutes of walking up whether you need a $700 repair or a rebuild, and we'll tell you the truth either way.

What we repair

• Settled or uneven steps — heaved front stairs, wobbly treads, risers that came uneven. Usually a base-and-drainage failure under sound stone; we rebuild them level, pitched to shed water instead of holding ice.
• Leaning or bulging garden and retaining walls — a wall that's moving is telling you water is trapped behind it. We rebuild with the drainage that should have been there the first time. (Walls over 4 feet need a permit — details here.)
• Heaved or sunken brick and paver walkways — sound units over a failed base get lifted and reset in sections; that's the repair-in-sections advantage brick and pavers have over any slab.
• Settled patio sections — the low corner that puddles, the run that dropped along the house. See patio repair & rebuild for the full story.
• Failing mortar joints on hardscape — crumbling joints on steps, caps and garden walls, repointed before water makes a small problem a big one.
• Stone veneer — loose or dropped veneer on landscape walls and features, reset properly.

Where we stay in our lane: we don't do chimneys or structural building foundations — that's a different trade, and you want a specialist there. Everything masonry in the landscape, we handle.

Why masonry fails in Greater Boston

One villain, many disguises: water. It gets into an open joint, under a step, or behind a wall. Then it freezes — and water expands about 9% when it does. That expansion lifts steps, tips walls, pops joints and heaves walks, a little more every winter. Add heavy clay soil that holds water against everything you build, and you have the reason so much ten-year-old masonry around here looks fifty.

That's why a patch-the-crack repair never lasts: the crack wasn't the problem, the water path was. Every repair we do starts with the same question as every build — where does the water go? It's the drainage-first habit that comes with being NDS-certified drainage contractors, and it's the difference between a repair that holds and one you pay for again in three years.

Repair or rebuild? The honest answer

If the brick, block or stone is sound and the failure is local — one corner settled, one run of joints gone, one section heaved — a targeted repair is real money saved. As a reference point from our patio work, lifting and resetting a settled section typically runs $500–$1,500. If the base under the whole thing was built wrong, resetting it piece by piece is throwing good money after bad — and we'll say so, with a quote both ways when it's a genuine choice.

Wondering whether your existing work was built right in the first place? We wrote the checklist: was my paver job installed correctly?

Serving Greater Boston

Brick and masonry repair across Boston, Somerville, Cambridge, Medford, Brookline, Arlington, Belmont, Watertown, Winchester, Malden, Everett and the surrounding towns — the same streets where we've been building new stonework since 1989.

37 years across Greater Boston. Unilock Authorized Contractor. NDS Certified drainage. Licensed and insured.