Fauntleroy, King County
Two parts of a brick chimney wear out long before the brick does: the crown, which is the sloped slab closing the top, and the mortar joints. This page covers both. In Fauntleroy our masonry work starts at $475, which buys a resurfaced crown or repointing over a limited area, and rises with the square footage of joints to be cut out and refilled. Access counts too, since a tall stack on a steep roof needs staging.
Typical investment
From $475
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$99 plus tax, deducted when you approve the repair
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Pick what you're seeing at your Fauntleroy home — we'll point you to the right fix.
What we do
The same crew, the same written quote — for Fauntleroy homes.
Level 1 examination of everything reachable, with a Level 2 camera pass when the reachable parts leave a question open
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Full-height brushing of the flue with a head sized to its shape and material
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Assessment of the stack from roofline to crown, with a photo of each defect
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Camera survey and measurement of the existing flue before anything is ordered
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Measurement of each flue tile, or of the whole crown for a multi-flue cap
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Burner, pilot assembly and firebox cleaned; logs or media put back in the layout the manual shows
Learn moreRanges shown for orientation — the exact figure is written up on-site, after the inspection.
Much of Fauntleroy's housing is old enough for this to matter. Seattle Parks places the first permanent homes in 1907; the Kenney Home opened the same year, the Southwest Seattle Historical Society notes, and the commercial building at Endolyne dates from 1926 according to the city's survey of neighborhood business districts. Around these landmarks, in the wider ZIP code area the Census reports on, three housing units in ten were standing before 1940. Lime-rich mortar of that period is softer than modern mixes. That is no defect, but it does mean repointing has to respect the original and not simply pack hard cement into old joints.
A year of precipitation comes to 38.29 inches in Seattle's long-running station record, and November, December and January each bring close to six. Washington's climate narrative, published by the Western Regional Climate Center, adds a wind direction for the wet months across the lowlands: south to southwest, most days. These are Seattle-area figures; no station reports from Fauntleroy itself.
Put rain and that wind direction together on a neighborhood open to the Sound, and one or two faces of a chimney take most of the water. In practice we find the south and west joints eroded deeper than the others, and the crown worn on its windward edge. So we measure joint depth on every face separately. Repointing the worst two faces properly is often better value than a thin pass over all four.
Every masonry repair (crown / repointing) we do in Fauntleroy includes:
Smoke coming back into the room, or a smell that won't go? Book the inspection first.
Book nowCrowns crack because they are thin, flat and fully exposed. Once cracked they pass water into the brickwork below, and the joints of the upper courses are the first to go sandy. From the ground the symptom is often a white bloom on the brick or a dark, damp band under the top. Left alone, the damage moves down the stack a course or two each winter, and a job that was a crown becomes a crown plus several square feet of repointing.
We mark which joints are soft and how far the crown cracks run, so the quote is by measured surface.
Failed mortar is removed to a consistent depth without chipping the brick edges; a broken crown is taken off entirely.
Joints are packed in layers and tooled. The replacement crown gets a pitch and a projecting lip, which throws water clear of the brick.
Fresh work is covered against rain until it has set, then photographed for your file.
After the 2001 Nisqually earthquake, three researchers mapped chimney damage across the Seattle area. Their abstract reports that in West Seattle neither distance to the epicenter, nor soft soil, nor terrain, nor which way a slope looked explained the pattern; the hardest-hit streets sat over mapped strands belonging to the Seattle fault zone, and one or two blocks past that zone's end the damage thinned out fast. Location, in other words, is not something a homeowner controls.
Mortar condition is. FEMA's advisory on quake-damaged masonry chimneys puts crumbling mortar, in an old stack without steel, first among its reasons chimneys fall. Repointing adds no reinforcement, and no old stack becomes quake-proof through it. What it does is restore the bond between bricks that time and water have removed, which is the one variable on FEMA's list that maintenance can change.
What this work is quoted at for Fauntleroy homes — the exact figure comes from the $99 on-site inspection, credited toward the work.
| Service | Price in Fauntleroy | What that covers |
|---|---|---|
| Masonry Repair (Crown / Repointing) | From $475 | Crown work, repointing and tuckpointing by surface area |
| Chimney Sweep | $189–$449 | Full flue swept, Level 1 inspection included |
| Chimney Inspection | $99 plus tax | Level 1 visual; Level 2 adds a full camera scan |
| Chimney Relining | From $1,900 | Full-length stainless liner, sized to the appliance |
| Chimney Repair | From $425 | Masonry repair — brick and mortar, scoped after diagnosis |
Ranges are what these jobs are quoted at in Fauntleroy. The exact figure is set on site after a $99 inspection (credited toward the job if you go ahead), and you approve it before any work starts.
Fauntleroy is a cove neighborhood in the southwest corner of Seattle that began as a summer colony in 1904, on Fauntleroy Cove, with permanent homes that go back to 1907 and hillsides that filled in after World War II. We work every part of it — Endolyne included.
FauntleroyKing County, WA · 47.523, -122.394
Before and after
Illustrations of what each repair changes on a typical chimney — not photos of a specific job.
Before
After
Before
After
Before
After
Four steps, each one on paper — so you always know what happens next.
Choose a genuine opening on the crew's calendar. Confirmation is immediate.
Liner, crown, cap, flashing and masonry examined in order — each finding photographed.
One document, plain numbers, covering only the work your chimney genuinely needs.
The repair is completed, then handed over with before-and-after photos of every item.
Yes. Seattle's residential code, at R105.2, puts chimney repointing on its list of jobs that skip the building permit, on condition that the envelope of the house is left as it was.
Seattle's chapter on chimneys accepts three materials for that top slab (stone, metal, concrete), wants it pitched so water leaves, wants a drip edge, and wants a caulked gap around the liner. That is how we form a new one.
$99 plus tax for the on-site assessment. That sum is credited against the masonry work if you give us the go-ahead.
A $99 on-site inspection, a written quote before any work, and photos of every item we touch.
