I bought this house almost a year ago(October 10th was the closing date). It's an 1849 Italianate... It has a partial basement surrounded by dirt crawls on 3 sides and a nice little addition with a modern crawl on the fourth.

But my problems deal more with the exterior. The interior foundation walls need a little pointing(thank god I read about the perils of modern mortar here before I decided to do it), but all the bricks look to be in good shape. On the exterior walls, the previous owner allowed ivy to overtake pretty much everything... so it likes to climb the foundation walls... I rip it down and it climbs again... One of these days I'm gonna get some round-up and take care of it for good, but I digress...

There is a lot of patchwork on the exterior walls... looks like they tuck-pointed and just got way too into it. In some of these patchwork areas, the bricks are beginning to pop their faces off. I have not found one brick that is actually loose or completely crumbled, so I don't see why this would be beyond recovery. Some opinions from experts would be appreciated, however...

Pictures of Bad Bricks

Much of the deterioration is due to the gray coating that is on the brick. It apparently is too thick and does not breathe well enough to allow the brick to dry out before freezing.