Tooth Brushes for Cleaning Masonry

We have been working, at a location in Manhattan, on rebuilding a small terra
cotta gable for too long now, almost two years. All along the way we have had
to deal with a customer that is irritated, partly because we cannot seem to
get the thing done, and partly because the design professional charges by the
hour. If only they had thought to design the project before doing it rather
than on our time after we got started. We have done our damnedest to keep
civil during this process, and we have attended far too many meetings for such
a small pile of masonry. The Empire State was built in two years.

The idea of design build in historic preservation makes me want to barf.
Usually what it means is that the contractor gets to build at fixed cost, with
a customer complaining about time and production, while the designer designs
hourly.

The design professional in this case appears to be stupidly insecure. Every
step of the way they ask for unheard of amounts of materials testing. I cannot
begin to tell you how much trouble we went through on the sand seive analysis,
which we thought was mild compared to what we went through on the brick and
terra cotta. It seems that not a single supplier of sand in the NYC area, or
within 50 miles, supplied sand to meet their specifications. We would have
done better to salvage our sand from the original mortar - except we were not
smart enough to think of it ahead of time and threw the mortar away. The
design professional's insecurity does not help the fact that we took the
project with an unseasoned management team... at least unseasoned to the idea
that they may have to spend more time in CYA than actually getting the work
done. Some people actually are born to believe in common sense and that to
build means to build, not to write letters. This is the kind of project that
keeps good contractors from volunteering their services. It is also the kind
of project that gives a bad name to the young conservators coming out of the
university programs.

The gable is 160' feet in the air and we just got word, this is no joke, that
we are to clean it using toothbrushes.

We are so sick of this one project that we are going ahead with this method of
cleaning simply in the hopes that someday soon it will all go away. If anyone
wants to know the design professional or the customer then contact me back
channel.

][<en Follett