This was a quick day job just outside of York on a farmhouse. The cement bed (flauching) was blown on top of the chimney stack and the top few courses of bricks of have seen better days as well.
Even though it was a low chimney stack I hired a tower scaffold to access it safely. To start, I removed the old mortar, I put aside the chimney pot and took off the top few courses where the bricks were loose. I cleaned off the bricks, mixed some sand/cement and relayed the top courses on the stack. Once that was done, I mixed another, stronger batch of mortar and re-bedded the pot on top of the stack. Before the final touches I cleaned up my tools and buckets. This extra time allowed the mortar to start to harden. After this, I went back up and smoothened the mortar again to make sure there are no cracks on the surface. Taking down the tower scaffold only took me 20 minutes which meant I was done by mid afternoon. Nice day, happy customer!
Screw it! 