Q: When we bought our house, the home inspector said the bricks in the fireplace needed to be re-pointed. He said this meant filling in the gaps in the brick mortar. But a lot more turned out to be ...

Q. My question is about chimney bricks. In 1987, I bought a twenty year old brick house. The furnace, gas water heater, and fireplace are all in the basement so the double flue chimney rises from ...

Q. This week: The brick chimney on our 1930's era house looks like it needs repair. From the ground I can see cracks in the bricks, and some of the cement and pieces of the bricks have come off and ...

Three years ago I had to replace half my chimney at a cost of thousands of dollars because of crumbling mortar and cracked bricks. The mason who finished the job told me I needed to have the chimney ...

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife have been indicted on narco-terrorism charges after being captured by U.S. by Herb Weisbaum Spring time is a good time to check any brick structures on ...

Q: A while back you had a column about what to do if inside or around your fireplace shows a lot of whiteness. My brickwork shows white; there is crud inside both upstairs and downstairs fireplaces.

Kelly has over 10 years of experience writing about home design and improvement for many prominent publications. She also spent several years working at a tech startup for an interior design game ...

A while back, we responded to a real estate agent who wanted to know how to fix an old two-story home with severely sloping floors. The home had just been newly drywalled and painted to get it ready ...

Where to start with chimneys? Probably here: A chimney is not just an elongated window, not just a portal from inside to outside with deep, brick sills. A chimney, in fact, is a machine for generating ...