In progress

My wife started to repair our garden wall a few years ago. The technique is very simple but slow. You hack out the old mortar, and then mix up new, using local sand, lime (NHL 5.0) and water, and squish it into the gaps. Wait 5 to 6 hours then tap it in with a brush (gives it a pattern) and remove any lose lime. You then leave it alone for a few decades. The lime reacts over a number of months turning back into limestone, which is hard enough to hold the wall together but soft enough to allow it to flex and breath naturally.

This section here require the SDS chisel to remove cement which had previously been used to point the wall, but it is too hard - which damages the wall and too sticky so it's difficult to remove to replace it... Anyhow now that the builders have mostly finished she has started working again, doing a square metre or so each morning and then finishing it off the evening. If you pay someone to do it (see recent pictures), it's much faster, but it also costs thousands of Euro to do, because even the pros take time to do it - lime can't be rushed...!