Is anyone familiar with the limestone veneer used in Central TX?

I had a mason do some work on my house a couple of years ago, and he gave me the following "recipe" for mortar for the rock: 2 - 2½ parts sand to 1 part white mason's cement. I mixed this up to do some mortar repairs recently, but the color when dry is much whiter than the original mortar.

The original mortar, as well as the mortar this mason used, has a sort of pinkish tint. What do I need to add to make this stuff match??

Thanks,
Neal

 

The difference in the color probably has to do with the sand used. See if you can find out his sand source. Or experiment with a few different sands.

 

OK, I wondered about that. I used some from a bag I bought at HD.

Thanks,
Neal

 

There is only one white masonry cement and one masonry sand available in Central Texas.

There are two things to look at:

First, fresh white mortar will ALWAYS be much whiter than old white mortar. You can choose to match the old today and it will not match it later, or you can leave it alone and it will age to match.

Second, you can change the appearance of white mortar by how it is finished. Tooled joints are whiter than wire brushed, acid cleaned are redder.

The best solution (and I am not kidding), is to match the tooling, then get some dilute mud and "wash" the repaired area with it. It will match immediately and will also match down the road.

 

Thanks much for the advice. I suspect my finish "technique" (ha- like I know what I'm doing!) was the difference. Also, by using bagged sand, I didn't use the same sand as real masons use, so that is probably also a factor. (By dilute mud, do you mean reddish dirt mixed with water??)

Well, at least they were small repairs, and they did the job.

Thanks again!
Neal