Indianola K-8 Exterior Masonry Restoration 2025

Indianola Informal K-8 in Columbus has its brick and stone back in shape. Prodigy cleaned the entire exterior, cut out and tuckpointed every joint in the worn band at the top of the building, repointed failed joints on every elevation, rebuilt and recaulked the stone, repaired spalled concrete, recoated the entry landings, and sealed the whole building with a silane water repellent. The same project added 25 accessible lockers, new doors and storefront, a pass-through window at the main entry and a new storage shed. It was delivered for Columbus City Schools in 2025 as a Gordian job order through the Equalis Group cooperative contract, which is pre-bid.

Masonry fails slowly and then all at once. Mortar erodes, cracks open, water gets behind the face of the brick and freezes, and the damage moves from cosmetic to structural. Indianola's walls showed all of it: eroded and hollow joints, cracked stone, loose brackets and abandoned fixtures, old caulk at the stone belts and sills, and concrete walls spalling at the edges. A previous repair had tuckpointed a band around the top of the building, and that band had worn out again.

The work started with a five-foot-square mock-up of the cleaning, joint removal and new mortar, approved by the district before anything else was touched. Then the whole exterior was washed with controlled-pressure water and masonry cleaners, and crews working from 80-foot boom lifts and roof-hung swing stages in the courtyards went joint by joint. The top band was repointed completely. Everywhere else, only the joints that failed a defined set of tests were cut out, so the district paid to fix damage and not to replace sound mortar.

Stone was rebuilt with restoration mortar matched to its profile, cracks were routed and sealed with urethane, and every stone-to-stone joint in the belts, copings and sills was cut out and resealed. Steel lintels were inspected and recaulked. Concrete walls were patched and sealed, unused retaining walls were removed and the ground regraded and seeded, and a new chain-link fence went in along East Weber Road. When the work uncovered more failed joints and some bulging brick, the contract's contingency covered the added repointing and brick rebuilding without raising the contract sum.

Inside, students with limited mobility have new Penco lockers sized for them, and the entry has a new pass-through window and new hollow metal doors and storefront, installed over the holiday break to stay out of the school day. For a district with an older brick school of its own, Indianola shows what a measured restoration can do: the building looks cared for again, and the walls are sealed against the water that was doing the damage.