Free Estimates | Licensed, Insured & Bonded
Serving Baltimore City and Baltimore County, MD
Woodlawn is really two housing stories sharing one name, and which one you own decides how your walls get fixed. Gwynn Oak and inner Woodlawn are a 1940s and 50s story: postwar brick and brick-veneer rows, Cape Cods and semi-detached duplexes. Windsor Mill and outer Woodlawn run 1950s through the 1980s, ramblers and split-levels first, townhome groups later. The older half is at the age where mortar joints and steel lintels give out together. The newer half fails through metal you cannot see behind the brick, and repointing over that buys a season. Charm City Masonry works both, and tells you which you have before pricing the job.
Licensed, insured and bonded.
01
Woodlawn sits about 6.8 miles west of downtown Baltimore, in Baltimore County: Catonsville below it, Randallstown and Lochearn above, the Patapsco River and Howard County west, Baltimore City hard against the east side. It covers 9.6 square miles and held 39,986 people at the 2020 count. People navigate by Security Boulevard, Windsor Mill Road and Liberty Road, with I-695 and I-70 carrying the rest.
One thing worth getting right: no USPS ZIP is actually named Woodlawn. 21207 is officially Gwynn Oak, with Woodlawn, Baltimore and Pikesville as accepted alternates, and 21244 is officially Windsor Mill. Two more, 21235 and 21241, belong to the Social Security Administration and CMS. So we say we cover Woodlawn (ZIPs 21207 and 21244). Those federal campuses are why the area answers to "Security, Maryland," after the Security employment district around the Robert M. Ball Building and the CMS headquarters, and why Security Square Mall opened near Beltway Exit 17 in September 1972.
The housing splits along that same ZIP line. In 21207, roughly 55 percent of the stock predates 1960, with about 6,151 units put up in the 1940s alone: brick and brick-veneer rowhouses, Cape Cods and semi-detached duplexes, most now 70 to 85 years old. In 21244 the peaks land in the 1960s and again the 1980s, which means ramblers and split-levels alongside later townhome groups.
Woodlawn has no historic district, which surprises owners expecting a review board to weigh in on a repointing job. What it has is two individual National Register listings, both added in 1985: the Lorraine Park Cemetery Gate Lodge and St. Mary's Episcopal Church. No paperwork, then, but plenty of buildings old enough that the mortar has to be matched by hand rather than pulled off a pallet.
Along the western side, where the ground falls toward the Patapsco and the Gwynns Falls drainage, water and grade drive the work. Lots cut and filled sixty years ago are still settling, and that shows up as walls leaning out and foundations needing parging, a thin protective coat of mortar over exposed block.
02
Charm City Masonry is a full-service masonry company in Woodlawn, MD, so one crew handles the joints, the lintel, the stoop and the chimney on one visit. The list below is ordered around what Woodlawn actually has standing. We also take commercial masonry work in Baltimore for property managers around Security Boulevard.
01
Repointing means cutting out the failed outer inch of mortar and packing fresh mortar back in. Tuckpointing in Woodlawn, MD is used loosely for the same job. The 1940s and 50s stock around Gwynn Oak is exactly at that age, and brick repointing in Woodlawn, MD is our most requested job here. The mortar has to be softer than your brick, because it is the sacrificial part of a wall. See brick repair and repointing in Baltimore.
02
When brick faces are spalling, meaning the outer skin flakes or pops off, repointing will not save them. Those units get cut out and replaced. The other common postwar failure is the steel lintel over a window: it rusts, swells and lifts the course above. A brick mason in Woodlawn, MD should check that line before quoting, because brick repair in Woodlawn, MD done above a rusted lintel comes straight back.
03
Front steps take the worst of it: rain, freeze, shovel and salt. We rebuild and resurface concrete steps in Woodlawn, MD, reset settled stoops, and replace slabs heaved into a trip hazard. See our concrete steps and walkways page.
04
Driveway aprons crack where the slab meets the curb cut and where tree roots push up. Concrete repair in Woodlawn, MD runs from a saw-cut patch to full section replacement, and an honest concrete contractor in Woodlawn, MD tells you which the slab justifies.
05
Crowns crack, flashing lifts, and the top courses soak up water from three sides. Chimney repair in Woodlawn, MD starts at the crown and the top joints, because that is where water enters long before it stains a ceiling. Our chimney repair services in Baltimore cover crowns, rebuilds and flashing.
06
On the graded lots west and north of the Beltway, a retaining wall in Woodlawn, MD holds back real soil pressure. We build and rebuild block, stone and poured walls with drainage behind them, because a wall without drainage is a wall on a timer. Above a certain height a permit and an engineer are required.
07
Stone piers, veneers and garden walls still turn up on older properties here. Repairing stone is mostly about mortar and bedding, so we repoint and reset rather than replace what is sound.
03
This one question decides your whole repair, and almost nobody explains it.
Solid masonry, in Woodlawn generally pre-1940s, carries the weight of the house through the brick itself, two or more layers thick. Water that gets in has one way back out, through the mortar joints. That is why joint quality is everything on an older wall.
Brick veneer, here generally 1960s and later, works differently. It is a single decorative layer of brick hung off a wood-frame wall with an air gap behind it, and it is designed to leak. Water gets through the brick, runs down the back face, lands on flashing, and exits through small openings at the bottom called weep holes.
So the failures are different failures:
You can tell which you have without a ladder: wall thickness at a window reveal, header courses (bricks turned end-on), and weep holes at the bottom course.
Why it matters to your wallet: repointing a veneer wall while a shelf angle rusts behind it is money spent on a symptom. The same line of joints cracks open again within a year or two. Fix the metal, then the joints.
Not sure what you are looking at? Send us a photo and we will tell you what it is. Call (410) 844-6510.
04
Climate does most of it. Masonry in Woodlawn, MD lives through roughly 45 inches of precipitation across about 121 wet days a year, plus around 19 inches of snow, and relative humidity that runs from 59 percent in spring to 71 percent in early fall. Walls here stay wet longer and dry slower than in a drier state.
Then the temperature sits on the wrong number. Woodlawn logs roughly 75 to 90 days a year below freezing, and January averages 34 degrees with lows near 25. A winter that hovers at the freezing point and thaws every afternoon does far more damage than one that stays hard frozen, because every cycle expands the water already inside your brick.
Salt finishes the job. Security Boulevard, Liberty Road and the Beltway ramps get treated heavily, and chloride is splashed and tracked onto steps, stoops, walls and the bottom courses of brick. It drives subflorescence, salt crystals growing inside the pore structure rather than on the surface, and that spalls brick and concrete faster than frost alone.
05
Woodlawn sits in the middle of our western service area, so we are usually a few miles away. Directly south, masonry repair in Catonsville means terraced hillside lots and pre-1900 lime-mortar buildings in three National Register districts. North of Liberty Road, masonry work in Randallstown is mostly 1950s and 60s ramblers and split-levels hitting the same end-of-life point as inner Woodlawn. East of the county line we cover the rowhouse neighborhoods of Baltimore City, and you can read more about Charm City Masonry before you call.
06
Free estimate
Send a photo or let us come look. We will tell you plainly whether you have a mortar problem, a metal problem or a drainage problem, and what it takes to fix it properly. Estimates are free and there is no pressure. Call (410) 844-6510 or fill in the form.
