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Andy deGruchy joined the Practical Preservation podcast to discuss his Craftwork Training Center, the historic masonry contracting and supply business and his philosophy of the body, mind, and spirit working together to create art. His 35 years of experience as a mason was highlighted as he explained his dive into the material science world and now working to help train the future craftsperson.
Contact:
Limeworks or Craftwork Training Center: 215-536-1776 Or email Andy at help@repointing.com
Bio:
Andy deGruchy is a brick and stone mason and historic masonry restoration contractor for 35 years based in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. Andy does all his work using specialty mortars and plasters that he has imported from France for the last 20 years. In 1999 he started LimeWorks.us, a specialty supply company that ships custom formulated replacement mortars for historic masonry structures throughout the United States. LimeWorks.us and deGruchy Masonry Restoration employs approximately 21 people. Andy also, operates a Craftwork Training Center, based in Telford, Pennsylvania, that teaches participants how to use LimeWorks.us mortar, plaster, and stone patching material called Lithomex. Andy is married to Audrey and they have four children.
Offer:
Veterans Discounts (call for details) and 50% off Craftwork Training Center courses for Buck’s County Community College students plus 1.5 prior learning units toward program requirements (offer extended to all other students)
Speaker 1:
Thank you for tuning in to the Practical Preservation Podcast. Please take a moment to visit our website practicalpreservationservices.com for additional information and tips to help you restore your historical home. If you’ve not done so, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Stitcher, or SoundCloud, and also like us on Facebook.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Practical Preservation Podcast, hosted by Danielle and Jonathan Keperling. Keperling Preservation Services is a family owned business based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, dedicated to the preservation of our built architectural history for today’s use as well as future generations. Our weekly podcast provides you with expert advice specific to the unique needs of renovating a historic home.
Speaker 1:
Educating by sharing from the trenches preservation knowledge and our guests’ expertise, balancing modern needs while maintaining the historical significance, character and beauty of your period home.
Danielle:
Andy, thank you for joining us today.
Andy:
You’re welcome, Danielle.
Danielle:
When I was reading that I was thinking about, we had a seminar two weeks ago on a Saturday and I actually, somebody asked about where they could get the lime based mortars and training and I did give you a plug.
Andy:
Thank you.
Danielle:
You’re welcome. How did you get started in preservation?
Andy:
Well, I guess first I have to answer how it got started in masonry and when I was in high school, I didn’t have funds really to go to college or know what direction I wanted to go. A lot of kids go undecided and they take student loans and that’s how they get involved in going to college, but I thought to myself, “Well, what’s the other options?” And dating myself with Dan Fogelberg that’s a guitarist.
Andy:
He sang a song, Leader of the Band. His father was a cabinet maker son, so all of a sudden that romantic idea of being a craftsperson sprung to mind. I started looking into trade schools and I found one of the oldest trade schools in the country, the Williamson Free School of Mechanical Trades. It’s called Williamson College of the Trades now, but it was called The Free School of Mechanical Trades.
Andy:
I applied there and it is in fact free. I lived there for three years on a scholarship room board and my training was all covered by a scholarship. I graduated with no debt and I went to learn masonry, specifically. When I got out with school to answer the question, how did I get started in preservation? Because I live in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and just lived with historic brick and stone buildings.
Andy:
When I got out, I worked for a few contractors for a few years, and then I decided that the level of masonry that I was doing is probably more elaborate of what I learned at Williamson than what was being done to just build block buildings or whatever I was building, so I decided to start my own business in 1984. That was a good 35 years ago. Well, when I had a truck and had a trough and we’ll travel and we’ll do whatever masonry, whatever somebody wanted, I could do all the different trades.
Andy:
I could set tile and plaster and stucco and blade bricks and blocks of stones. I found that when I was asked only six months into business to repoint an old stone farmhouse I did find that that work was a little more pleasant because you could slow things down and you could do things that had to do with remedying the shortcomings of a historic structure where the stonework has to be relayed or repairs have to be done and how that masonry ties into the corners.
Andy:
I found that that was just a tip of the iceberg of finding that all of our beautiful historic structures have so much detail. Their character defining features have to do with belts of brick work laid in red mortar, where the rest is laid in say, buff colored mortar or there could be a brown stone with rusticated faces and Indiana limestone, sills, and just so many ornate detailing that we don’t see today.
Andy:
I fell in love with preservation, so that’s what got me started in historic preservation, just being asked to repair old buildings and I decided, you know what, I’m going to make that my specialty and niche.
Danielle:
And niche and focus. That makes sense. I am going back to the beginning. I love that song. Actually every time I hear it, it makes me think of my dad. In the early ’80s, when you were starting out on your own, did you have to do a lot of research on historic masonry or were… I know right now with the internet, it’s much easier to do your research now, but was that a struggle in the beginning?
Andy:
Yeah. I would say at school, my instructor was a contractor for 30 years, and then he also taught there well…Wait. He was a contractor for 20 years and taught there for 30 years. And his instructor was also 30 years as an instructor there. A lot of the type of information that I got was a throwback to old. I had a great textbook, well, more than the textbook, my notebook, where I took written notes of what I was taught.
Andy:
Came in helpful later regarding mortar mixes and things. But what had me very curious was that only in 1986, did I take an intense workshop by a company called RESTORE. They’re based in Manhattan, and they had intensive workshops in Williamsburg, Virginia for a couple of weeks. And I took a class led by the professor of architectural conservation at Columbia.
Andy:
It was that class, only two years in the business where material science opened my eyes. As we know, this interview is about we’re going in with lime works, what’s all with the lime and all that stuff. Well, when you go to school and trade school, whatever the materials you use or what you’re told to use, and you’re not a chemist, you don’t know anything about all this stuff, so you do whatever you’re told.
Andy:
But when I realized that there’s 6,000 years of building history with lime and sand only for mortar, and yet these castles and all these buildings worldwide are still standing with a quiet testimony. Hey, this works. You’re getting new and improved everything in the United States and everywhere else, but guess what, if you go back to very fundamental types of materials, you can get a service like this outstanding.
Andy:
I learned this from the professor from Columbia at this workshop, so I became very intrigued with the material that is the binder that holds together the sand, the aggregate in a mortar, this binder’s called lime. And what does that mean? Really, it’s very, very simple material, yet, there’s some complexities. And interestingly in our country, probably the world, like most who vie from market share to sell their stuff.
Andy:
People have an interest in keeping it smoke and mirrors and confusing and all that where it doesn’t really need to be. Part of our mission is because we’re craftspeople first, we really just want to know, give us the straightforward, straight up answer, be on the level about all this stuff, because we need to execute good quality repairs. My intent to get the material originally to understand it was to elevate my craft and raise the bar for the quality of the repair.
Danielle:
And longevity.
Andy:
And longevity, all that good stuff. Yeah.
Danielle:
Well, that makes a lot of sense to me. I was doing some research, not for this interview, but in April, I did a blog post about sustainability and concrete. How hard Portland is environmentally and how lime is a better option. That was when I had the revelation that all of the stucco, plaster, mortar, all of that is pretty much the same basic recipe or not recipe, but ingredients and then the recipe is just a little different. I hadn’t had that revelation until then.
Andy:
Yeah. Modern materials do have all kinds of synthetic, plastics, resins and all kinds of things. Lime, it’s like the trade is ancient. It’s a lot of work and it’s a lot of hand work to do good quality detailing. Then the mortar is this very, very simplistic, earthy, very plentiful material lime, but it’s been modified in so many ways with people who have a corner on their, whatever it is they’re trying to patent, and make a system that can be palletized and shipped.
Danielle:
Right.
Andy:
But buildings weren’t built like that originally.
Danielle:
No.
Andy:
There’s some real good truths about going back to how things were done and finding that the easy answer, the simple answer, the one we did before was the best answer.
Danielle:
Yeah. We talked about how you got started and your focus on preservation. Are there things that you wish you knew when you got started that you know now, any major mistakes?
Andy:
Major mistakes. Great.
Danielle:
Yeah. A couple of confessions?
Andy:
My gosh. My favorite story is to say, if you had a wonderful omelet, that omelet chef made you say, “My gosh, you’re a genius in what you do.” You’d say, “Well, you didn’t see the thousand omelets I had to throw out to get to this point where I can just whip it together in no time.” In the same way, I don’t think there’s any rite of passage to get to… I’m an overnight success. 35 years’ overnight success. You know what I mean? No.
Andy:
You got to put in time, school of hard knocks, get beat up. I think the biggest trouble, I had a conversation with a contractor from New York, Manhattan this morning who in a way, a lot of us in the trades, we rely on each other to talk about our troubles or whatever and he was just saying how the trade, if it could only just be the trade and it wasn’t all the other complexities of running a business and dealing with people and all the laws and regulations and things that just make it so restrictive and hard.
Andy:
The craft, the trade is pleasurable. It’s lovely. It’s wonderful. It’s a wonderful thing to spend your life on. I think the things that I wish I knew when I got started was, I guess I did not know how hard it would be to operate and run a seasonal business because masonry and especially if you’re going to use lime. Your window of time, it’s from good weather in spring to the worst of around Thanksgiving in the fall.
Danielle:
Yeah.
Andy:
You got nine months to make hay while the sun shines. You have a limited amount of time to really make up whatever your figures are and you need-
Danielle:
And then you have to make it work.
Andy:
But everyone wants to work year round, so you have to schedule inside work and do this, do that. Rain for the last two years has been-
Danielle:
My goodness, rain has been terrible.
Andy:
Talk about, even when I think I had it figured out, then how about we throw this ranch into your mix.
Danielle:
Right.
Andy:
Boom. Now it’s raining and I’ll tell you, there’s so many issues, the world’s getting so complex. Anything I wish I knew when I started, you know what, I really don’t wish, if I could go back, I don’t wish that anybody would have told me how hard it was, because if they did-
Danielle:
You might have gotten discouraged.
Andy:
…I might have not even gone for it.
Danielle:
Yeah.
Andy:
But when I was 21 and invincible.
Danielle:
Right.
Andy:
Okay? I’m 58 now, but back then I was like, “Okay, I can do it. You know. Had I known I might’ve been just, my gosh, scared to death. You don’t know, you just deal with it one… And that’s pretty much, when we ended up discovering in the end, we can try and plug numbers into a game chart and try to figure out the computer, the scheduling or whatever. I don’t think so. You just got to just cross that bridge.
Andy:
You run with plan A and B and C, when guys call in sick or something happens or materials aren’t there, or who knows what. You’re going to have to just be thinking quick on your feet and be ready to be [inaudible 00:13:33] like the lime. Lime is here for thousands of years, because it has a symbiotic relationship with nature. It does not fight water.
Andy:
It likes water to come into it and releases it to back to the atmosphere, and because it’s malleable and moves with the slight movements of the earth, it has lasted for centuries because it’s not rigid like cement is. The point is, if you are rigid, a person in the crafts and arts, artists have to be a little free thinking, a little bit open-minded because if you get rigid about stuff, you are just going to break, like cement breaks.
Danielle:
Yeah, and you see some of those artists that are like, they just can’t handle it?
Andy:
Yeah. The starving artists is a whole nother issue about we get focused on our craft and we forget to balance the book to pay the bills somehow or another, even though my name is deGruchy, it’s a French name. Right?
Danielle:
Yes.
Andy:
I got a little artistry, French, thing. My mother’s maiden name, [inaudible 00:14:32]. I guess I’m German side fighting in my head like, “You balance the books.”
Danielle:
Industry.
Andy:
Then you can do fancy stuff.
Danielle:
That’s great. I think that’s great advice too, because you have to have that balance. What are the challenges that you see in preservation looking or that you’re encountering now?
Andy:
Well, I’d say there’s so many challenges. It is almost overwhelming to think of what would go wrong. You really have to approach this. Probably it’s a life lesson thing, you got to almost approach life with the glass half full, because you could see it half empty and emptying out and you can see it’s the end of the world and at any given time, probably from, you had Noah’s day, it’s the end of the world to now. Noah’s probably building an ark again.
Andy:
It’s a mess. The rain, the environment. Okay. Never mind drug abuse everywhere. Okay. I think at the root of what I see as the biggest problem with preservation is that they often say like… There’s a saying, I’m not sure who quoted it, but it was, “What we have decided to save tells a lot to the future.”
Danielle:
What was important to us.
Andy:
What was important to us. Right. I think that seeing value in older things, I love older things because I realized you’re never going to get that made in America, you’re never going to see that. When they bulldoze a historic stone building with these beautiful stones have been hand dressed and have beautiful detailing, I don’t know that they realize how much effort went in and how effortlessly beautiful that building is as opposed to a stick frame with just, and last American stucco when everything else it’s planned obsolescence or falling apart.
Andy:
But the issue is that we don’t seem to teach value in the substance of long-term community. Everyone wants to go to Europe, to these villages that are ancient and see how they built it once and it’s here for a thousand years, but here we’re building a pop up McMansion kind of. Care today, going to more points of sale to sell it, grab your money and run, whoever the builder is or whatever.
Andy:
We’re going a very slow and hard track by trying to stop everything, hold the phone, let’s look at what we’re doing and let’s try and do a very high quality repair. I’m not alone. There’s a lot of people who believe, and you need those, new patrons. In preservation, you need somebody who says, “I get you. I know what you want.” You know what, I’m not flipping this church. A lot of our customers will be as someone who has a church in a community.
Andy:
They say, “We’ve been around for 150 years, we did not repoint the Bell Tower for a hundred years. Now, every 25 years, we got to rerepoint. “Andy, can you get us back on track with the a hundred-year fix?” Because we can’t afford to keep doing $200,000 repointing jobs every 25 years.
Danielle:
Well, and the whole idea of having that permanent and the people who really do understand. I can tell you when somebody calls and they’re not a tenant in the house. If they’re a landlord or they’re just trying to flip it, I know that we’re not going to be a good fit because the solution that we offer is not going to be the cheapest, which is what they’re looking for and they just want something so that it looks good so that they can sell it and be done.
Andy:
Exactly. There’s a problem with what people value, there’s too much emphasis on money and how much money you have and money, money, money. It’s really the stuff that money buys I suppose is what maybe, but then what you buy, I think the-
Danielle:
Also shows your value.
Andy:
We work for a lot of people that are very successful, because if it’s not a historic church, it’s a person with maybe a homestead that goes back two or three, four, five, six generations, and they feel a stewardship of their building. And they’re like, “You know what, this, my great, great grandfather built it. I want to do this 100% the right way, because I value my family, values the structure and all that kind of thing.
Andy:
I find that either it’s a family homestead or people who have purchased because they’re well off, they’ve done well in business, let’s say, and they decide that they really want that Bucks County farmhouse with a lot of acreage and beautiful history behind it and all that. When I go down their tree line driveway and I meet these people, some of them are… No wonder they did well in business. They make good decisions. What they do is they know how to procure good quality goods.
Andy:
They will rifle through not taking the low… They’re, We’re not trying to go for the lowest price or what, because they know, and they’ve already… The things that they drive, the things they own, the things are all of very solid substance. One, is teaching, what is quality? Where should you spend your money? What should you engage yourself in and purchase and surround yourself with? There’s an education. This is where the key thing is so what’s the biggest problem?
Andy:
And we know we often go back to education. People need to be educated because of the way the industries in the United States sell you stuff, I remember when Lick-and-Stick stone came out, we never do Lick-and-Stick stone. Never. We’ve only done real stonework, real brick work. When it came out, I could not get over that this stuff was dropped off with five shapes in a box. It looked like you put somebody’s patio on their wall and I’m like, “This stuff’s never going to sell, how’s it going to go?”
Andy:
You know what, Lick-and-Stick, when you put a Salesforce behind even crap, you will put out of business, the genuine article, the real masons and the quarries closed and everything else and now it’s palletized. I don’t care if it’s pharmaceutical or Lick-and-Stick stone, or everything else, everyone is going for sales and market share and packaging things into a system. It’s not about hand work and craft and what.
Andy:
The biggest problem is not falling for the lie that is fed to us every day by stuff that’s systematized and saying, that’s the way you got to do it. You got to go with the system. Don’t buck the system, Andy, but artists buck the system.
Danielle:
They do.
Andy:
We like to say, we’re not going for the status quo. You don’t got to tell us how to think and what to do. We’re going to do what our heart tells us.
Danielle:
Yes.
Andy:
The biggest challenge of preservation is that people aren’t educated about what really is valuable and then the other, the younger generations anymore, and you talk to anybody who sells antiques. They say the new generations; they’re not really interested in antiques. They want a condo and a bicycle and go to the park. And I can’t blame them. Life is about enjoying your life not necessarily having a dining room like your mother did, or whatever, with the silverware.
Andy:
People don’t do that stuff anymore. Exactly. The values can change. It can be maybe changed for good, but still the idea is where you put value is that, a problem in preservation is like say a developer, they don’t have a tear in your beer about bulldozing a farmhouse that’s on the property where they’re going to put a big development of home. No care whatsoever. This thing’s a nuisance, it’s going to go away.
Andy:
Because there’s pressures and because there’s middle of the night, okay, you know what you do, you tear it down and then you beg forgiveness after it’s done. Let’s do that in a hurry. Now, let’s try that trick. Okay. Everybody is tricking everybody and the tricks in way, same with making an Ame… No, we don’t produce anything America, we supply. Guess what? We don’t produce anything. And believe me, I love microbreweries and old whole towns are being reinvented by these being restaurants or microbreweries. But we’re not producing anything.
Danielle:
No, it’s also the space.
Andy:
We’re just moving around old money and again, I think all this new development, bulldoze and everything, it’s in our way, it’s in our way because I have an agenda. My agenda is make money and make money to the expense of our cultural heritage, our historic restoration. We don’t care to tell the story to our children. “No, Johnny. We’re not from a land of glass boxes.” It’s like in Philadelphia, if they start bulldozing every building in there, let’s just say they…
Andy:
Philadelphia is doing a great job right now of restoring a lot of structures, but when you approach a city and anymore the beautiful skyline of what would be buildings that had a traditional appearance or masonry, and they replaced with this less maintenance, all glass, Atlantic Glass Blocks, it doesn’t tell the story of where we came from and who we are and what we value. What did our forefathers value, where they obviously thought this is tear it all down?
Andy:
Why don’t we just tear everything down. That must be an answer, tear stuff down. It’s really, I think a big problem in preservation, you need people who care for things, conservators and curators and people that want to document and archive history and value and tell the story, because we need to be able to tell our children’s children where we come from, what’s important. I don’t care if it was 15,000 years ago.
Andy:
Cave paintings, they told the story, you should have seen the bison, the horses, the things we shot. They wanted to tell the story to the next generation who it was. These historic structures are a thumbprint of how we did things and what was of value, and we cannot lose that. And if we do, you say, “What’s the worry if we lose it?” Well, even in war, when the British occupied Philadelphia in 1777, one of the first thing they knew, we knew it. We knew it.
Andy:
I’m right here from Philadelphia. I was born in Philadelphia and raised in the area. Okay, we took the Liberty Bell down as quick as we could get it down. You know why, because they’re going to go in Philadelphia, they’re going to take all those bells down from all those churches and melt them and then shoot us with our Liberty Bell to make bullets. Right?
Danielle:
Yeah.
Andy:
We took that belt and we ran it up past Quakertown where I live up in downtown, hit it overnight. But the point is, the whole reason, not just to get metal and make bullets, the whole reason that even in warfare, the very first thing you do is to demoralize people is to take away their cultural identity, ruin everything they recognize as valuable. Well, our own worst enemy, we’re doing it to ourselves. We’re tearing our own heritage. We don’t need anybody to bomb us. You know what I mean?
Danielle:
Right. Yeah.
Andy:
We’re bombing ourselves. The problem with preservation is this incredible shift of thinking that has to occur and I’m hoping that we’re on the forefront of it and I just am searching for other like-minded people to be champions with us is all I’m saying.
Danielle:
Right. The whole demolition thing, I know when I was involved with the Historic Preservation Trust in Lancaster County, the executive director at the time was going to every municipality in Lancaster County. That’s one thing that I don’t think people understand is, all those decisions are made at local levels. You have to get involved in your local politics and there’s 60 different municipalities in just Lancaster County. They can write these demolitions.
Danielle:
Because in Pennsylvania’s constitution, it says we have to conserve our historic resources along with our natural resources. Those two things are in the Pennsylvania constitution. We went to all of the municipalities were like, “At least put a demolition review in place because a lot of them don’t have anything.” One way that I think that I’ve been trying to get people involved in that is at least talk to your local people.
Danielle:
Get them to realize that there might not be anything standing in-between no legality or no rules standing in-between your demolition permit or you might not even need a permit depending on where it is.
Andy:
Right.
Danielle:
I don’t think most people realize that. I think they think it’s made at these big levels, but it’s all local.
Andy:
Yeah.
Danielle:
Yeah. I guess we talked about your trends in preservation. Do you want to talk about what you’re doing here to help with the education at the craft…
Andy:
Yeah. Craftwork Training Center.
Danielle:
Yeah. Craftwork Training Center.
Andy:
Craftwork Training Center. Basically, it’s like this, if you’re wondering what am I sprinkling on my Cheerios to have all this energy to do this? I’m 58 years old. Most people are thinking like, “Should I retire? Do I have an exit strategy? How am I going to tip toe out backwards out of this one?” I’m thinking to myself, well, I don’t golf, so I’m not planning to retire. Because one, if you love what you’re doing, when’s the line between, and what do you do when you retire? I wouldn’t be purposeful.
Andy:
When I realized that LimeWorks, our company supplied iconic projects around the United States, we spend a little more to restore St. Patrick’s cathedral in Manhattan. We spite all the mortar to restore the Rotunda Dome at University of Virginia. It’s a blur. There’s so many historic structure. We are relied on so greatly. We employ in our laboratory someone who has a master’s in historic preservation from Penn, and we do mortar analysis, all this wonderful stuff.
Andy:
And I feel like, you know what, Andy, it’s a dream that a brick mason is going to ever get a chance to serve this industry in such a large capacity. Almost like, Andy, you’re obligated to not retire. We’re going to prop you up as long as we… I’m telling myself like, “Everybody prop me up, we’ve got to keep this going.”
Danielle:
Well, and you only have two hands. You can only do so much physical work, but to be able to… I can see that thought process.
Andy:
You got to delegate, and that is exactly my thought process in the sense that all our guys, I’ve had guys with me 30 years other tw… I’ve got many seasoned professionals here. We thought to ourselves, “What am I going to do?” Say, “Well, here’s a gold watch. Thanks for your 30 years. Don’t let the screen door hit you on the way out.” I’m not doing that damn right.
Andy:
Rather, I want to honor them and say, “Hey, you know what? You got a lot of knowledge. How about we try in the next, whatever many years we get to try to pass the Baton to another generation and create this, mentor this love past the fire of the love of the trade.” Because the trade, it sounds a lot like work and the schools, well, generally the vo-tech schools are like, “Johnny, you’re not doing well. Let’s put you in a vo-tech because you seem to be a flunky.”
Danielle:
This makes me angry because you need a brain.
Andy:
Yeah. You go into these cities and these beautiful row homes and the pocket doors and the wood work, these guys were very skilled and they were smart. They had to measure and cut and figure… And at the end, it’s not just you’re very smart or you’re very needy because it’s a depression. It’s a 1930 row home or something like that. No, it’s because in the end, there is a fulfillment that is being lied to.
Andy:
In a way the universities, and I got nothing against the university. I love higher education as well, but I’m a little bit upset about all the billboards you see on the highways about, if you’re going to have cancer, you’re going to have a heart operation. They’re all competing in the hospitals like it’s some kind of… Again, money.
Danielle:
Right.
Andy:
Then the same thing with universities, come learn your new career, your life here and all that. They might get nothing but a huge student loan and not be able to get a job where here in the trade, you engage your head and your heart and your hands and you end up having a sense of fulfillment and you’re earning while you’re learning. You’re making a great living, and I should probably be the poster child of that because I went to trade school and now I have a wonderful home and I have this firm.
Andy:
My intent now, if you ask what’s my pushback? I am saying that instead of planning any kind of retirement, me and other guys who work for me as masons and trades people, we are engaging them to be at the forefront of teaching whomever would take classes now. In the last 20 years I have LimeWorks. People say, “Well, can you tell me any intricacies about pointing with lime or plastering or stucco, anything like that?”
Andy:
We’d say, “Yeah, we’d run a class haphazardly whenever, but then, when I decide to buy this farmstead, that goes back to 1736, seven generations of a [inaudible 00:31:25] Knight family lived here. There was a saw mill that ran for 150 years on a water wheel. I told the township, when I said, “Hey, I’m zoned to the plan industrial. Do you mind if I take this and repurpose and breathe new life into this old farm?” And they’re all dilapidated buildings, but I restored it.
Andy:
Let me restore them and convert it into a place that teaches historic preservation using this as the background of these antique buildings. They love the idea because probably a lot of the lumber that built the surrounding towns came from this dust in the middle right here today.
Danielle:
Right.
Andy:
They’re all for what I’m doing and now I’m trying to honor my guys by saying, would you run classes? We’re still actively, we’re doing a Belltown right now.
Danielle:
You’re working, yeah.
Andy:
Church. We’re still working, but I’ll pull them off. Like today we had seven people taking a repointing class. One of my guys, came off the scaffolding, and I got him here to teach you today. At first, the guys were like, “I don’t know how to teach a class. I don’t know what to say or whatever.” But after a while, they realized by showing people how much they actually know by them showing them, realized no, they don’t get what you’re saying.
Andy:
You know what I mean? Now they’re very proud about it. I feel that the best thing we can do, I would call it a legacy part of our lives is to say, let’s take whatever many years we have and try to do our best effort to incubate a new generation of proud craftsmen because you can’t legislate and tell people, “Okay. People who don’t make any… Or a welfare of the city, and we’re going to start a program, we’re going to enroll you, it’s all paid for, for you to become a mason.”
Andy:
Then they go, and they’re like, “I don’t want to do this. They told me to do this. I’m doing this because I, whatever, I got to do it, or else I won’t get a paycheck.” But we’re not going about it that way. We know that the only way to really pass a trade on to someone else is you have to learn from a mentor, an apprenticeship. You got to work with somebody, understand, and then all of a sudden, you start to fall in love with the nuances of what you do and once you start engaging your head and your heart and your hands-
Danielle:
It all comes together.
Andy:
Yeah. You start making money by it because you’re good at it and then you start feeling really… You can’t wait to get them a book about it, another book or reading or hearing about this, going to a seminar. And next thing you know, you’ve got fulfillment in your life because a lot of people are searching for that too.
Danielle:
They are.
Andy:
They’re not just after money. They got to be happy.
Danielle:
You want more than just a job.
Andy:
Exactly.
Danielle:
Because money and needing to pay your bills will only get you out of bed so many days and then the other days you’re calling in with excuses. I had two thoughts while you were saying that. I don’t even know what the name of the program was, but there was a program in Lancaster City like that and I was calling it Carpentry for Convicts because it was like they were having a trade school. There were people who had just gotten out of jail, and had to go to it.
Danielle:
And I’m like, “Did anybody ask them?” But, who comes to your classes? Is it homeowners? Is it trained people? Is it-
Andy:
A lot of people think that it’s just homeowners or something like that, but no, it’s not. We do have homeowners sometimes, we’ll have people come from all across the country, even Jamaica, because I got a connection with the islands where they liked my idea of Craftwork Training Center. The problem is worldwide of younger people not going into the traditional trades. They’re trying to learn in Jamaica how we are doing this because they want to-
Danielle:
Replicate.
Andy:
…replicate, and get a cluster of old buildings and start a Craftwork Training Center there.
Danielle:
That’s great.
Andy:
People have come from all over to take the classes. All right. Well, we have homeowners, Missouri. They have come from Missouri. Say, “I’m here today because I have tried to get someone to repoint my chimney or my foundation. I can’t get anyone.” And the truth is in the end, if we show the simple steps to do it, it’s not rocket science. You don’t have to have a Harvard degree to do repointing.
Andy:
However, sometimes the guy is disqualified, who has a Harvard degree, because they are not going to just focus on the simple task of what it is. Some simple people who do simple work is such so profoundly exactly what you need to do to get the job done.
Danielle:
Definitely.
Andy:
People will say, “You know what, I am just going to take this class and fix my own place.” We do get homeowners, but we also get, the International Masonry Institute is the training arm of unionized masons, and we’ve had their trainers come here to be trained.
Danielle:
That’s great.
Andy:
Yeah. We’ve had training not just to repointing, but we have at least a mix. It’s only a matter of time till everyone who is in the trade understands it, but it is superior to anything out there. How we use it-
Danielle:
[Crosstalk 00:36:17]. And that was for brick and stone. Correct?
Andy:
Brick and stone. We’re storing and repairing loss faces of bricks and stones and the material, we just had an intern from Penn, do her thesis and they put it through a hundred year weathering chambers and all tried to beat the stuff out it. Came up with flying colors. We know that we have very, very good materials to work with. Union Masons are finding that, guess what, also, he’s selling it at a very palatable price compared to the ooh la las.
Andy:
Some people want us make their European branded, with smoke and mirrors and all kinds of things, just for money, and yet there’s shortcomings and when you do the repair, the family improved maturely, and they’re like, “It must be application errors. Your guys aren’t good enough or didn’t know.” Or whatever. Well, the masons, you can’t fool them, if their hands on the wall, and they’re using our stuff up against what they already know.
Andy:
They are saying, “You know what? This stuff feels good. Somehow something feels very good about this material.” And then they’re seeing the outcome and they’re demanding to the architect or the building owner, “Could we please switch the specification to this stuff, this was the mix, because it’s beautiful stuff.” Because of that demand, then the Union training facility said, “A lot of masons are wanting this stuff. We better get trained because we got to certif…”
Andy:
When someone comes to take a class here, we will give them a certificate of completion. What that says is, “You had a pulse when you were here and you did something.” Right?
Danielle:
Right.
Andy:
Certificate completion doesn’t guarantee anything because we get people who come here and after day one, we’re like, “Have you ever done this before?” And they’re like, “No.” And it’s like, “You know what? You got natural talent.” Then we’ve had people who were masons with 15 degrees and everything else and they can’t even fricking lay a brick. The guy is, “I don’t know what… I have no idea.” What I’m getting at is, we have a place in order to have people practice and perfect their art, they can come here to Craftwork Training Center.
Andy:
And they can take a very simple class and a more complex class and a more complex class, but we have this, with say, Lithomex, “We don’t have a certificate placement. We have a certified installer class and then we have a certified in class for training others.” That’s what the IMI is interested in having their trainers be trained to be trainers, because they don’t want to send everyone to tel for PA and they got 60 some training facilities across the country.
Andy:
People come here from homeowners to a country bumpkin mason guys that are out, just doing work in Bucks County, or Lancaster, wherever, anywhere USA, we got those guys. We get all sorts of people, just curious and want to do… We have people who have a regular job and they want to augment what they do. They want to keep their day job, but they see, we have a wood shop where we teach wood shutter, wood sash and door restoration and we intend to have a smithy shop, we intend to have other shops that…
Andy:
We have a plaster studio. People come because they want to just have something that they could do on the weekend, or they could sell a job or just for their own satisfaction. Yeah.
Danielle:
Okay. I think we’ve touched on, but you can tell me if there’s anything else, what makes your business different from other preservation businesses?
Andy:
I think my business is a lot like other preservation businesses, because if we gel with another person, who’s a craftsperson and we gel with someone who’s a preservation business, like you guys at Historic Preservations. The reason we gel is because you love what you’re doing. We love what… That’s a common denominator.
Andy:
The difference is, the thing about deGruchy Masonry Restoration, and many have told me this over the years is that, “Andy, there’s some big co-op companies, that do masonry and restoration in the cities and yet they’re all owned by…. It’s just business, nothing personal. It’s just business here.” We’re just business people. We don’t care what makes… Well, maybe they care, but they’ll say, “It’s the commodity which we sell.” The difference is I am a mason and I love the trade-
Danielle:
And you understand it.
Andy:
…and understand it, so, we are not like other preservation businesses that get into it because it’s a lucrative business to get into. We are like preservation businesses that are into the real depth of the word to put conservation, to restore, to preserve, to keep intact, to be healers, helpers, fixers, menders, then we gel with those people. That’s what makes us very much like them.
Danielle:
Yeah, and we struggle with that sometimes when we’re finding employees is like, you can get a good trim carpenter and they can do that work, but they get tired of repairing stuff all the time. They just want to go in and do new trends. It’s a different mindset. It really is. How can our listeners get in contact with you?
Andy:
Well, if they want to call LimeWorks and Craftwork Training Center, it’s easy. We’ve made it easy. 215-536-1776. That’s the spirit. Right? We have that number, easy to get a hold of both. The Craftwork Training Center and the LimeWorks.us and my masonry business, repointing.com is where you see the work that we do as masons and that’s where people get a hold of me. My email is help@repointing.com.
Danielle:
Okay, and I’ll make sure that those are on our website too when this gets posted.
Andy:
Great.
Danielle:
Do you have any offers, any classes that are upcoming, anything for the listeners?
Andy:
Well, yes. One really exciting thing that I think I’d like to share, is that it’s just hot off the press. About two years we’ve been working with Bucks County Community College. They are quite a stellar organization. Really, a world-class associate degree in historic preservation for such a community college, has such a high level class is pretty amazing. They are known for it.
Danielle:
They are.
Andy:
All around the country. Here, what’s really exciting is that whether it be Penn or Columbia or Rutgers, wherever they teach historic preservation, there is a very, very distinct need. If someone is going to be involved in historic preservation and they might even dictate to the guys who do the work, what should be done should be done. It would be very helpful that those people who went to these schools had touched a brick, had laid a stone, no wonder-
Danielle:
Agreed.
Andy:
Bucks County Community College is entering a partnership with us and it is now effective that what’s going to happen is if a student takes a class with us for a day and a half, they will be issued a prior learning unit, one college credit towards-
Danielle:
Very cool.
Andy:
…towards her two-year associate degree and if they spent three days with us, it’s to college credits and a week with us, they get three of these programs.
Danielle:
That’s great.
Andy:
Yeah, it feels good. I call myself bricky, mason, to be validated by the university to say, “Hey, you know what? You are doing something of substance here-“
Danielle:
Yes, and value.
Andy:
“…and we recognize you and we are going to issue a college credit towards that, which is very exciting.
Danielle:
Exciting.
Andy:
On the flip to show them that, look, it’s not about money. I will tell you that running Craftwork Training Center, it’s a money sink. I have to have a love for doing this because it’s not a money maker. I’m taking the revenue streams of what I do with LimeWorks and what I do work in restoring buildings.
Danielle:
And then you put into this.
Andy:
And by falling back into this, it’s a give back to the community and is it a trades thing. I know it, It’s a money loser. To double up my money losing capabilities, I told Bucks County Community College, “Any student that is enrolled in your program are posted costs 50%.”
Danielle:
Wow. Great.
Andy:
It’s half the cost, if you’re… And that doesn’t go just for Bucks, we are going to try to extend that to other legitimate students, with an agreement with other universities that if their students want to take the class, we want to be there to help them.
Danielle:
Very good.
Andy:
We don’t want money to be an issue and we also, for vets, the Craftwork Training Center this site, the township’s allowed me to take this very home we’re in right now. It’s built in 1897. It’s a nine-bedroom brick Victorian. They’re allowing me to turn it into a private guest house. In doing so, we’re making it ADA compliant because if wounded vets and people want to say, “I’m not packing today.
Andy:
I’m going to learn to do stained glass repairs sitting down, but how to do mosaics and stained glass in a stained glass studio.” We want to be able to-
Danielle:
Accommodate.
Andy:
…accommodate that. In the same way, we have veterans’ discounts and they’re all posted on our website. craftworktrainingcenter.com.
Danielle:
Very good. I’ll make sure that those get posted on our website. Is there anything else that you can think of, you wanted to share that we didn’t cover?
Andy:
No.
Danielle:
Okay. Very good. Thank you.
Andy:
All right. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for listening to the practical preservation podcast. The resources discussed during this episode are on our website at practicalpreservationservices.com/podcast. If you received value from this episode and know someone else that will get value from it as well, please share it with them. Join us next week for another episode of the Practical Preservation podcast. For more information on restoring your historic home, visit practicalpreservationservices.com.