Raymond Brothers Building

About Project

This project involved restoring a 133-year-old warehouse in the highly visible corridor of the Historic Haymarket in Lincoln, Neb. The goal; keep the historic look of the building while repairing the exterior. MBI got to work tuckpointing, which includes removal and replacement of the old deteriorated mortar, on approximately 50% (or 800 bricks) of the exterior façade as well as removing old brick and laying new brick. 

We narrowed our focus to the large areas of deterioration and were tactful about the number of bricks to replace at once. A crucial component was to brace the brick above to ensure larger portions of the wall didn’t fall when the brick was removed. Once the brick was finished, we toothed in the brick around the windows (filled in the areas of missing brick at the window openings), and the interior masonry portion of the window openings was rebuilt. 

We partnered with Artisan stone Co., a precast manufacturer, to create a digital model of the existing stone sill. The existing deteriorated stone sills were replaced with the new replica precast sills. The entire exterior façade was washed and cleaned. At the interior, we cleaned and sealed all of the masonry with a matte finish sealer. This helps provides a denser dustproof finish to the masonry at the interior of the building so it could be left exposed without having to paint the brick.