Leaning Chimney Repair in Lexington, KY

A lean shows itself from the ground. The stack no longer runs parallel to the corner of the house; a gap has opened where the brick meets the siding, wider at the top; the crown sits at an angle to the ridge; cracks step through the courses like a staircase. From the driveway the chimney looks as though it is pulling away from the house. What is happening is that a column of brick, tied to the house only at the roof, has started moving on its own.

On the chimneys around Lexington, a lean usually means one thing: the mortar has stopped working. Joints that went to sand years ago no longer hold the courses together, the wall has hollowed behind its face, and the stack has racked over on the side that took the most weather. Movement is the line between a repair and a rebuild. Where the sound masonry starts, and how far below the lean, should be found from the roof rather than guessed from the lawn, photographed, and put to you in writing before anything is agreed.

A leaning stack is taken down to the first sound course and relaid from there. Every sound original brick is kept, spalled or shifted units are replaced with matched brick, the mortar is matched to the house, a new crown goes on top, and the flashing is re-let at the roof. When the lean is confined to the exposed stack, that is a partial rebuild from the roofline up; when it is not, the whole height comes down. In this market a partial rebuild starts around $4,000 and a full rebuild of a tall stack can reach $15,000; where a leaning stack lands between $4,000 and $15,000 is set by how much comes down, its height, the brick match and the staging.

New mortar in the joints of a stack that has moved does not move it back. Repointing renews the joints of a wall still standing where it was built; a wall that has racked needs its courses relaid. The opposite test is the reassuring one: a straight stack with its brick faces intact and only the joints gone sandy is a repoint inside the $500–$2,500 band whatever its age, and no lean means no rebuild. Crowns, caps and the rest are on the repairs short of taking the stack down.

Richmond’s older streets have the occasional stack that has leaned too far to argue with; the pre-war chimneys on Georgetown’s downtown blocks lean in soft lime mortar that wants matching; the tall exterior stacks on Nicholasville farmhouses have stood through a century of freeze-thaw. Masonry runs March through November, because mortar cures in warmth. A lean noticed in January can still be scoped, photographed and priced in writing while it waits for the weather.