Salvaged bricks part of Texas renovation project

The Austin, Texas, branch of St. Louis-based Western Specialty Contractors says salvaged, reclaimed bricks were a key component of its work to restore the façade of a century-old building in the Texas capital.

The project took place at the Skyhouse Lounge, Austin’s first rooftop barbershop and cocktail lounge. The combination bar and barbershop is located on Congress Avenue in the city’s popular warehouse district.

According to Western, the historic building’s exposed masonry wall had been damaged, neglected, painted and overlayed several times over the decades.

“To further complicate the restoration, the wall’s existing masonry was covered in tar, stucco, paint and other ‘mysterious’ foreign materials,” the company says.

Western partnered with Fort Worth, Texas-based project engineer ECS Southwest to perform masonry restoration, tuckpointing and waterproofing on the exposed wall.

“The bricks and mortar were basically crumbling out of the wall, and it took delicate care to properly remove, lay up the brick/block and tuckpoint,” says Webster Wrightsman, a project manager with Western. “The engineer originally estimated 50 percent of the mortar needed to be tuckpointed—this turned into virtually 100 percent. Many of the bricks were too deteriorated to salvage, so we had to purchase pallets of new brick to lay up.

“We ended up purchasing reclaimed bricks to keep the aged aesthetic to the façade. There were also many years of stucco, waterproofing and paint layers to remove. This required brainstorming from the engineer and manufacturer to figure out the best cleaning agent to remove everything.”

Western’s crews also were tasked with making repairs to the building’s lower roof wall. As it turned out, the wall adjacent to the lower roof, which was initially thought to be all brick, was actually made of half brick and half gypsum board, so a pivot in repairs was necessary.

“We had to alter the work scope to extend the thermoplastic polyolefin (TPO) membrane up the bottom half of wall and place Hardie [fiber cement] backer board on the top half,” Wrightsman says. “Our excellent roofing crew flawlessly installed the new membrane and had no issues with the unforeseen circumstances.”

Western's crew also faced challenges coordinating with the adjacent parking lot owners and the neighbors to access the roof and wall for certain scopes of work.

“Access to the south elevation wall was a challenge because all parking stalls adjacent to the wall had to be purchased by ownership for the duration of the project,” Wrightsman says. “We also had to de-mobilize and re-mobilize during the project to allow full parking lot access for a South by Southwest event.”

Western completed the project about two weeks after the contract deadline this July but within budget despite several unforeseen conditions and additional work required to properly complete the restoration.

The St. Louis-based company has been family-owned and operated for more than 100 years and is one of the nation’s largest specialty contractor in masonry and concrete restoration, waterproofing and specialty roofing. Western has 30 branch offices nationwide and employs more than 1,200 people.