For the birds

Our house was built in 1931. It's brick. We've had some work done on it; built like a brick house is good as far as it goes, but still! At one point, we noticed the gap between the floor boards and the base board widening underneath the dining room windows. The plaster cracked in a line straight down from the windowsills. We knew there were cracks in the mortar of the outside wall. None of the bricks were damaged, but there was that zigzagging sign of settling. Peter went outside and gave the wall a shove AND IT MOVED. That was in November. A very unnerving winter passed, and we had that wall pulled down and the windows replaced with French doors.
When the mortar begins to crumble, you just mix up some more and shove it in there. It's called pointing, or tuck pointing, or jointing. We hired an old man to do it once, and then we did it again during the big renovation summer. The thing is, at least at our house, the sparrows chip away at the mortar. You know how birds have to ingest a little gravel to help them digest? Apparently the sand in our mortar is JUST RIGHT for them. And they chip, chip, chip away at the mortar around our mailbox. Well, it seems their little beaks are just pointy and long enough for them to NEARLY REMOVE the mortar all the way back to the plaster and lathe. The moisture, when we have moisture, and we did last winter, and some this summer, seeps in through the cavities. Now the"new" (4 years old) paint job in our foyer is crumbling and the plaster along with it, just like it was when we moved in, and for the succeeding six years. See, we tend to overlook things and hope they'll go away.
Anyway, this weekend, I took it upon myself to do the tuck pointing. The mortar that I had was not enough to finish the job. I bought some more, and now I have to get back out there. It would be ridiculous to NOT finish!!! Especially since just tuck pointing is not going to get the foyer painted.
I did, you'll be happy to know, defrost the freezer...