If the brick along the bottom of your garage is flaking away, a block course beside the door has cracked, or a detached garage wall has started to lean, you are on the right page. We repair and rebuild the brick and concrete block on attached and detached garages across the Twin Cities, from a handful of spalled faces to a wall that has moved and has to come down.
A garage is often the least looked-after masonry on a property, and it tends to fail before the house does. The reasons have more to do with the garage itself than with the weather, and they are worth understanding before you decide whether you are looking at a small repair or the start of a rebuild.
Signs Your Garage Masonry Needs Work
What We Repair and Rebuild on a Garage
Spalled and salt-damaged brick at grade
The destroyed band in the bottom two or three courses is cut out and replaced, not coated over. The question worth asking alongside it is why that stretch got wet enough to fail, because the answer is usually a downspout, a grade that falls toward the wall, or an apron that sheds water the wrong way.
Cracked and spalled concrete block
Damaged block units are cut out and replaced with block matched to the wall. Where a crack runs below grade into the foundation, or steps through a block stem wall, that is a foundation question rather than a garage one.
Leaning and bowed garage walls
Rebuilt. Where a footing has heaved, the footing is dealt with first, because relaying a wall on ground that moved once is a way of paying for it twice. The sound brick or block is returned to the top where it can be reused.
Garage-door lintels and headers
Where a rusted steel lintel over the door has lifted the masonry, the brick above comes down, the steel is replaced, and the wall goes back. It is more work than it looks from the driveway because the wall above has to be propped up while the steel is removed.
Brick and block around the service door and windows
The smaller openings fail the same way the main door does, usually at the lintel or sill, and they are installed on the same visit, so there is no second trip.
Repointing failed mortar on a garage wall
Where the brick is sound but the joints have gone, the joints are ground out and packed with mortar specified for the wall in front of us. How we choose that specification is set out on our tuckpointing page.
What this job does not include
The overhead door, its tracks, springs, and opener. That is not masonry, and we will point you to someone whose trade it is.
The concrete slab, the garage floor, and driveway flatwork. Pouring and finishing concrete flatwork is referred out.
Thin stick-on brick veneer, the quarter-inch product glued to a wall. Different material, different trade, and not something we take on.
Building a complete new garage. The carpentry and roof are not our work; we do build brick or block walls for a garage, and that is on our brick walls page.
Why Garage Masonry Fails First
Three things gang up on a garage, leaving the house alone.
The first is heat, or the lack of it. The house keeps its masonry warm from the inside all winter, so water in the wall rarely gets the chance to freeze solid. A garage has no such warmth behind it, so the whole wall freezes through, and the freeze and thaw cycle works on it from both faces instead of one. Our tuckpointing page explains how that cycle breaks down masonry.
The second is salt and water at ground level. The apron and the slab edge collect meltwater, tires and boots carry deicing salt in off the road, and bags of de-icer often sit on the floor against a wall. Brick within a couple of feet of all that fails from the bottom up faster than weather alone would take it from the top down.
The third is the footing, especially on older detached garages. A garage was usually built to a tighter budget than the house, and a shallow footing moves with the frost. When the base moves, the wall above it cracks, and brick has virtually no ability to stretch, so the crack remains open once it forms.
What It Costs
Garage brick repairs are priced the same as the rest of our brickwork, and the ranges are published on our brick repair page rather than kept back for the visit. Minor brick replacement of a few faces starts around $1,500. A small wall rebuild runs roughly $2,000 to $3,000. A larger wall, a full garage elevation, or anything in concrete block is quoted after the visit.
These are starting points for typical work, not quotes. The estimate is free, in person, and Sam does it.
How a Garage Repair Runs
Why People Hire Us for Garage Work
We would rather quote the smaller job that lasts
A garage is an easy place for a homeowner to be sold more work than the wall needs, precisely because nobody enjoys spending money on it. If one or two bricks have failed, you replace them. If the wall has moved, you rebuild it. We will show you which one you have.
The repair-versus-rebuild answer is given on site, not kept back
You get the reasoning in front of the garage, in the same words Sam uses, so you can hold our answer against what you are seeing.
Sam is on the job, not just on the estimate
Most of our Google reviews name him personally rather than the company. On a six-person outfit, that is the thing worth knowing about how the work is supervised.
Ten years on the workmanship
In writing, on what we touched. It is not a materials warranty, and it does not cover masonry we did not work on.
Fix the Grade Damage Early, or Pay for the Foundation Later
The repair most worth doing early on a garage is the one most likely to be waved off as cosmetic, because it sits at ankle height where nobody looks. The crumbling band of brick or block at the bottom of a garage wall is not a surface problem. Once that fired skin is gone, the softer material underneath soaks up water, and the salt that caused the damage keeps arriving every winter.
Left alone, that failure does not stay at the bottom course. It works down into the footing and the foundation below, giving water and mice a way in. At that point, a repair that would have been a day of brickwork has become a question about the wall's base, which is on a different page and a larger number. Our foundation repair page is where that conversation goes.
That is the whole economic argument for a garage. A little money spent at grade while the damage is still in the brick is money that keeps the problem from reaching the part of the wall you cannot see. We will tell you honestly whether you are still in the first stage or already into the second.
Common Questions
Why does my garage brick fail before the brick on my house?+
Because a garage gets the worst of three things at once: no heat behind the wall, salt and meltwater collecting at the slab edge, and, on a detached garage, a shallower footing that frost can move. The same brick on a heated house gets none of that.
Can you fix the crumbling brick at the bottom of my garage wall?+
Yes. The damaged courses are cut out and replaced, and we look at why that stretch got wet in the first place, because a downspout, a grade, or an apron shedding water the wrong way is usually part of the story. It is worth doing early, before it reaches the foundation.
A block cracked next to my garage door. Is that serious?+
It can be, because the block beside the door carries the header and takes a shove every time the door runs. A widening crack is worth having Sam look at. A hairline that has not changed may just need watching, and we will say which we think it is.
My detached garage wall is leaning. Can it be straightened?+
Not usefully. Free-standing masonry that has moved keeps moving, and relaying the top courses just gives you a straight top on a wall that is still leaning. Where the footing heaved, the footing is dealt with first, then the wall is rebuilt, reusing the sound units where we can.
Do you repair the garage door, or only the masonry?+
Only the masonry, including the lintel over the door and the brick or block around it. The door itself, the tracks, the springs, and the opener are a different trade, and we will point you to someone who does them.
Can you build the brick walls for a new garage?+
The brick or block walls, yes, and that is on our brick walls page. A complete new garage, with the carpentry and the roof, is not work we take on.
Can you work on a garage in winter?+
We will come out, look, and get you priced and scheduled in any season. The laying waits for weather mild enough for mortar to cure, because mortar put into a hard freeze does not set.
What does the warranty cover?+
It is a workmanship warranty, which means it covers the quality of what we did for ten years, not the brick or block as a material and not masonry we did not touch. A warranty on workmanship is the one that actually answers the question people are asking: whether the repair was done right.
How much does garage brick repair cost?+
A few replacement faces start around $1,500, and a small wall rebuild is roughly $2,000 to $3,000. Block work and anything that has moved are quoted after Sam has seen it, because what is under the wall decides the number.
Where We Do This Work
We repair garage brick and block across St. Paul, Minneapolis, Bloomington, St. Louis Park, Richfield, Minnetonka, Eden Prairie, Plymouth, Maple Grove, Wayzata, Blaine, Circle Pines, Little Canada, Woodbury, Lake Elmo, Cottage Grove, Stillwater, South St. Paul, West St. Paul, Inver Grove Heights, Mendota Heights, Eagan, Burnsville, Apple Valley, Rosemount, Lakeville, Victoria, North Branch and Big Lake. Further out than about forty-five miles from St. Paul, send photographs before the visit, because a wasted trip helps neither of us.
What Customers Say
What appears below is our live Google feed rather than testimonials we picked out, so it shows whatever is genuinely on it.
Get a Free Estimate
Photographs help on a garage. A close shot of the damage and a wider one of the whole wall, taken square on, usually tell us what we are dealing with before we arrive. If the bottom courses are involved, a shot down at the apron and the grade helps too.
Expect to be told the count: how many units have actually failed and whether anything has moved. The price follows from that conversation.
Free estimate, in person · Ten years in writing on the workmanship · (612) 509-0718