Brick
One of the great things about River North, especially the Courthouse District where the restaurants are located, is the great old landmark buildings. We are lucky enough to inhabit three of them now.As a design element, we decided to take a look at the brick behind the north wall. The look of exposed brick is not always appealing depending on its condition, but a wall of brick can also be a great design element. Our contractor cut a series of 3 foot by 4 foot holes to expose sections in the north wall. The condition of the brick looked pretty good. There was some concern over the tuckpointing and certain areas were covered in a plaster. but besides that - and a few spray paint marks - the walls looked to be in good shape.
posted by Andrew McCaughan at
1:16 PM
3 Comments:
If it's an exterior wall, I believe it is, you have to abide by City's new energy code provisions which is, I believe, at least R-19 for exterior walls. If you have only 4 wythes of masonry between you and the cold air, then the R-value of this wall is only 3.2 which doesn't meet the code. You might be able to beef it up elsewhere in order to make up for this, but you'd have to plug it into REScheck and find out. So, the brick looks nice and it could be cleaned with a chemical solution but I don't think it would meet the local energy code provisions.
Cheers!
PS You mentioned sandblasting. One does not sandblast historic brick even on the inside. You don't want to remove the finish and that's what sandblasting does. Just a heads up!
One more thing, one usually does not sandblast historic brick even on the interior. Sandblasting removes the baked finish on a brick and leaves it vulnerable to rapid decay. People on the east coast seem to have more experience with this sort of thing and are a bit more cautious. Just a heads up!
Post a Comment
<< Home