Masonry quotes by the square foot of wall face, and by nothing else
A mason’s office is samples and deliveries. There is brick to match for a repair, a mortar color to match on an old house, pallets to schedule so they arrive after the footing is poured and before the crew, a footing inspection to fit in, and a winter to plan around. And between all of it come the calls: a garden wall, a stoop that is coming apart, a rowhouse front somebody has finally decided to have repointed.
One number carries this trade: how much wall there is, measured on the face, length times height. Everything else is a pick-one or a count — what it is, what it is laid in, how many steps go with it, what it stands on, what comes out first. None of it is hidden under anything, which is why a mason can put an honest bracket on a website when plenty of trades cannot.
That unit is also where this page stops. A square foot of wall face is vertical. A driveway, a patio and a walkway are measured on the ground and belong to the concrete page and to the paving trade — a brick wall around a patio is yours, the patio inside it is not. And a chimney appears here exactly once: a stack rebuilt above the roofline is brick, mortar, crown and flashing, which is a mason’s work, while sweeping, inspecting, relining and fitting caps is a chimney sweep’s. Different trade, different truck. The demo says so out loud rather than quoting it.
NapkinPrice™ gives that shop three services under one account. New brick and block asks eight questions and puts a range on the screen, repointing carries your set-up charge inside the number instead of springing it at the door, and natural stone — along with anything structural — goes down a third path that never guesses a price at all.
Her last answer is whether she has a photo of where the wall is going. The lead shows it, so you know to ask for the picture when you call back; the picture itself arriving with the lead is still on the roadmap, so that list gives it no tick.
The eight things that set a masonry number
One area figure, two counts, four pick-ones and a ZIP. The hardest thing on the whole form is pacing a wall she has not built yet, so the help text does that teaching rather than pretending the question is easier than it is. Every rate behind it sits in your dashboard, to change the morning a supplier does.
Square feet of wall face
The base number the whole quote hangs off: length times height in feet, counting ONE face even when the wall is finished on both sides. There is no length-by-height box in the engine, because no rule multiplies one answer by another, so ask for one total and let the help text do the work — a 40-foot garden wall four feet high is 160 sq ft. The answer carries a floor and a ceiling you choose, and a figure outside them is turned back for her to correct, never quietly changed. On our demo card that square foot is $34, so 160 of them with nothing else on the job comes back $4,950 to $5,930.
What is being built
Veneer, a freestanding wall, or a retaining wall. A pick-one percentage rather than three separate rates, because the answer changes the wall, the footing under it and the laying together: a veneer is one skin tied back to something already carrying the load, a freestanding wall is two skins with a cavity and a cap, and a retaining wall is a structure with a wider footing, drainage stone, fabric and rebar down the cores. On the demo veneer is the rate, a freestanding wall +30%, a retaining wall +48%.
Which unit you are laying
Concrete block, standard modular brick, oversize or specialty brick, manufactured thin stone veneer. Minus 30%, the rate itself, plus 20% and plus 32% — a spread small enough that nobody reads it as a mistake, because those four are modular units laid to a line. The same wall above comes back $9,197 to $11,016 in block and $14,029 to $16,805 in thin veneer. Natural full-bed stone is deliberately not on that list, and the section below is about why.
Masonry steps, as a count
Priced per riser and never by the square foot, because a step is a little wall with a tread on it and nobody measures one in square feet. $825 each on the demo, and it is a number question with a multiply rule, so three genuinely costs three times one. It is also where this trade stops short of flatwork: the treads and the cheek walls are masonry, the patio they lead down to is a concrete or paving job and is quoted on somebody else’s form.
What it stands on
Masonry has to sit on something below the frost line or it moves every winter and cracks. A wall going onto a sound foundation, slab or poured curb needs nothing; otherwise it is a day with a machine, digging, forming and pouring, before a single brick is laid. That is labour and concrete spread across the whole job rather than a line item, so it belongs on a percentage — plus 18% on the demo, and "not sure" is set to the same number on purpose so the honest answer is never the expensive one.
What comes out first
An allowance, added once for the job and trued up when you can see what is underneath — nothing, $650 for an old fence or a few courses, $2,200 for a whole wall or stoop to break out. Flat and not per foot, because a flat amount on a pick-one is added once however big the wall is; that is what the rule kind does, and the help text says so rather than leaving her to find out. Old masonry is the expensive one: it comes out with a breaker, it goes in a dumpster, and the dumpster has to get to it.
Access for a mixer and a pallet
A pallet of brick does not go through a front door. If the only way in is through the house or down a set of garden steps, every unit and every bag goes by wheelbarrow, and that is two extra men for the whole job. So this one raises the job MINIMUM to $4,200 and adds no dollars at all: 60 square feet of brick veneer whose arithmetic is $2,040 quotes at $4,200 to $4,578, because the floor clamps the low end up rather than sitting under it.
Travel zone
The demo shop charges nothing in Brookland, Capitol Hill or Petworth, $95 out to Bethesda, Silver Spring, College Park and Bowie, $175 across the river to Arlington, Alexandria and Fairfax, and 5% plus $295 for everywhere else it travels. Each zone is a list of whole ZIPs or first three digits with a flat charge, a percentage or both, and her ZIP takes the closest match. A zone you mark out of area shows her no price, only a note that her ZIP is outside the area you normally cover, and you still get her details.
A real brick wall, start to finish
The demo’s brick and block service asks these eight in this order, here for a forty-foot brick garden wall four feet high at a house in Brookland, freestanding and finished both sides, on a new footing, with three brick steps up to the yard and the old chain-link pulled out. The live engine priced the answers outside the winter window, and nobody typed the total into this page.
| # | What she is asked | What she answers | What it does to the price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | About how many square feet of wall face are we building? | 160 | 160 × $34 on the demo = $5,440, the figure the rest builds on |
| 2 | What are we building? | A freestanding garden or privacy wall | +30% over everything. Veneer adds nothing, a retaining wall +48% |
| 3 | Which unit are we laying? | Standard modular brick | No change to the rate. Block −30%, specialty brick +20%, thin stone veneer +32% |
| 4 | How many masonry steps go with it? | 3 | 3 × $825 = $2,475 — the other genuinely per-unit line, counted by the riser |
| 5 | Is there a footing under it already? | No, dig and pour a new one | +18%, pooled with the wall type |
| 6 | Is there anything to take out first? | An old fence, railing or a few courses | A flat $650 allowance for the job, not per foot |
| 7 | Can a mixer and a pallet of brick get within about fifty feet of the work? | Yes | Nothing. A no adds no dollars either; it lifts the floor to $4,200 |
| 8 | Got a photo of where it is going? | Offered | Nothing. It tells you to ask her for one |
| The arithmetic, in the order the engine runs it | $5,440 + $2,475 + $650 = $8,565, then the two percentage answers pool into one and +48% applies once to all of it → $12,676.20 | ||
| She sees | $11,535 – $13,817 | ||
| What lands in your inbox, the second she submits | Name, mobile and ZIP, her eight answers, and the photo answer | ||
The $34, the $825, the $650 and the percentages are the demo shop’s, and Tailgate Office keeps no price list for masonry; on your account you set them, and a per-square-foot rate can change the morning the brick price moves without an edit to your website. The percentages have two seams: they pool rather than compound, so plus 30 and plus 18 make plus 48 and not the plus 53.4 you would get by multiplying them out — which on this job would be about $463 more. And the pooled figure lands on the whole additive subtotal, so the freestanding band is charged across the steps and the fence allowance too, roughly $937 of this midpoint. The help text says the wall type is figured across the job rather than implying a per-foot rate, and the measure is where it is trued up. The total is the engine’s own: for those eight answers it returns $11,535 to $13,817, and the demo gives the same back outside the winter window.
The example masonry company we keep has its own website with NapkinPrice on it, quoting live from the real engine on a page that is not ours. Give it the Brookland wall and see what comes back; between 1 December and 15 March expect the cold-weather rate on it.
Try the live demo site (opens in a new tab)Block, brick and thin veneer price off one rate. Stone does not, and says so.
Why one family of units sits on the card and stone stays off it.
The engine has five kinds of pricing rule, and not one of them multiplies an answer by another answer. A number question can carry a per-unit rate — the wall face, the steps, the brick being swapped on a repair. A pick-one either adds its dollars once for the job or takes a percentage of all of it. What it cannot do is apply its own rate to her square footage, so “the material sets the per-square-foot rate” is a sentence this engine cannot say, and a page that claimed it would be selling something the form does not do.
Inside the unit-masonry family that is genuinely fine, because those four really are a percentage of each other. Block, brick, oversize brick and manufactured thin stone veneer are all modular units laid to a line off the same scaffold by the same two men, and minus 30, nothing, plus 20 and plus 32 is an honest spread that nobody reads as a mistake. The demo dropdown carries exactly that, and the same wall comes back $9,197 – $11,016 in block, $11,535 – $13,817 in brick and $14,029 – $16,805 in thin veneer.
Natural full-bed stone is not on that dropdown and cannot be. It costs a great deal more than brick installed, so an honest percentage would be a very large one — and because a pooled percent lands on the whole additive subtotal, the engine would then apply it to the steps, the footing and the demolition as well, which cost the same money whatever the wall is faced in. She would be paying stone money to have a chain-link fence pulled out. Worse, the number would still be wrong, because quoting stone means quoting the stone: what is actually on the pallet, how much of it is usable face, how long a mason spends turning each piece to find it. There is no rate card for that, and there never has been.
So stone routes. It is the first case on the site-visit service, the unit question’s help text names it and says where it went, and this page never prints a per-square-foot figure for stone, because the fixture cannot compute one. That is not a workaround invented for masonry either: it is the same shape the flooring page arrived at for tile against carpet, taken one step further because one member of this family genuinely will not sit on the card at all.
Brick and block masonry — quotes instantly
New walls, veneer, steps and the footings under them. No trip charge on this one, because the measure sells the wall; instead it carries a job minimum of $1,450 on the demo, so twenty square feet of block veneer whose arithmetic is $476 comes back $1,450 to $1,581 rather than at what the arithmetic says. One answer lifts that floor without adding a dollar: no way in for a mixer and a pallet raises the minimum to $4,200. And there is a ceiling above it all — 260 square feet of thin veneer, freestanding, four steps and a new footing reaches a $23,022 midpoint, so past $20,000 the widget stops pricing and hands you the lead to quote by hand.
Repointing and masonry repair — quotes instantly
Steady work in a city of brick rowhouses on soft lime mortar, where worn joints get cut out and refilled. The set-up and trip charge is the service base fee — $185 on the demo — so it is added once however long the list is and cannot be dodged by answering nothing to everything. A two-story rowhouse front, 400 sq ft, forty brick swapped, lime mortar, quotes at $9,984 to $12,452; add a rusting lintel to rebuild and it is $11,171 to $13,933; a 60 sq ft patch off a ladder is $1,049 to $1,308, and the cheapest answer set possible floors at $650. Its band is wider than new work at plus or minus 11%, on purpose: nobody knows how deep the soft mortar goes until the scaffold is up.
Stone, structural and chimney rebuilds — site visit, never priced
Site-visit mode captures the whole spec and shows no number at all, which is the only honest answer to a fieldstone facade, a bulging foundation wall or a stack that has to come down to the flashing. It asks what it is, roughly how old the building is, how much of it, whether anything is actively moving and whether an engineer has already been out — and not one of those answers moves money. They tell you which visit goes first and whether you are bidding a scope or writing one. In place of a number she reads that you like to see a job like this first, and you have the spec before you go. This is also the only place a chimney appears on this account, and its help text says plainly that a sweep, an inspection, a liner or a cap is a different trade.
One service carries a winter rate. The other refuses the work, and that is the more honest answer.
Mortar needs warmth to cure. That is not a mood about the weather, it is a property of the material, and cold-weather masonry is worked around it: heated mixing water, sand thawed on the pile, the finished work tented and kept above freezing while it sets. All of that is real money on every winter job, so new work carries a seasonal plus 10% from 1 December to 15 March — a window that wraps the year end, which the engine spots on its own without anybody entering two ranges. The same wall booked on 15 January comes back $12,689 – $15,199, and the disclaimer says exactly what the ten per cent buys rather than calling it a busy-season rate.
Repointing carries no season at all, and that is a decision rather than an empty field. A new wall is a project you can tent; six hundred square feet of open rowhouse front is not. So this shop does not book repointing between December and mid-March at any price, because the mortar would not cure and the work would simply fail — and its disclaimer says that, in those words, instead of pretending a percentage covers it. Leaving a service with no season is your choice to make, and so is giving it one; what you should not do is invent a number to fill the box.
The travel zones stack on top of all of it, and they are the same engine run on the same eight answers with nothing changed but the ZIP: Brookland 20017 is $11,535 to $13,817, College Park 20740 is $11,622 to $13,921, Arlington 22201 across the river is $11,695 to $14,008, a ZIP in the catch-all zone is $12,381 to $14,829, and a ZIP outside every zone you serve gets no price at all — a polite decline, with the lead still captured. On the repair service that trip charge is a much bigger share of a small job, and it should be: the same $1,049 to $1,308 patch quotes $1,364 to $1,701 out in the catch-all ring. Neither priced service could have gone live without a base fee or a minimum under it, $1,450 on new work and $185 with a $650 floor on repairs, because the dashboard refuses a priced service that could quote $0.
A board of mortar will not wait, and neither will the caller.
A board of mud goes off whether or not somebody is calling, and a man on a line with a trowel in his hand is not stopping to answer it. Only 52% of callers to home-service businesses speak with a person (Invoca, 2026 (opens in a new tab)), and fewer than 3% of callers sent to voicemail leave a message (Invoca, 2024 (opens in a new tab)). When you do not pick up, she tries the next mason. In a trade of five-figure walls, a missed call is not a rounding error.
| What a missed masonry call is worth | On the demo account |
|---|---|
| A 40 ft brick garden wall, three steps, new footing | $11,535 – $13,817 |
| A two-story rowhouse front repointed, forty brick swapped | $9,984 – $12,452 |
| A 60 sq ft patch of bad joints off a ladder | $1,049 – $1,308 |
| Callers sent to voicemail who leave a message | Under 3% (Invoca, 2024 (opens in a new tab)) |
| One recovered wall pays for | 57 months of the bundle |
| One recovered patch pays for | 5 months |
Once texting is switched on, CallMitt™ answers a call you could not take with a text that says who you are, since a text-back without your business name will not save, and her reply goes on the thread with her wall quote. The message is picked by the hour and the day, against the hours you actually keep — the demo shop runs 7 to 4, because the board is loaded at first light and by four the mixer is washed out, so a 4:30 call honestly gets the after-hours version instead of one claiming somebody is on a wall.
Catching a forwarded call by itself needs your own texting number. Until that is switched on you log the missed call, its reply is written and kept, and any reply kept more than an hour is never sent. Running already: your five messages, the 7-to-4 hours, vacation mode and the holiday and weekend messages, the quiet hours, opt-outs, and the thread her reply joins.
How CallMitt Works Run Your Own NumbersA mason is hired on two questions, and a résumé answers neither
The first is about his back, not his hands. Can he lift and set an eight-inch block all day, in July, bent over a line? A man who has not done it does not know yet, and finding out on day two costs you a week. The second is the one a résumé never makes clear: has he laid to a line as a mason, or has he been tending — mixing, carrying, keeping the boards full? Both are honorable and only one of them can build your wall.
Put “Now hiring — text CREW to your texting number” on the mixer and the board fence. CrewFunnel™ asks eight short questions: is he 18 or older, can he lift and set a block all day, has he got a valid driver’s license, has he laid to a line rather than tended, how many years has he laid brick, block or stone, how far out does he live, can he start inside two weeks, and what was the last job he worked on. Four of those are knockouts — under 18, not up to the lifting, no license because the mixer goes with the crew, or living further out than you will drive — and the rest come back as a weighted fit score, years in the trade heaviest and the laying-to-a-line question next.
On the demo job the miles from Washington knock a man out past 30 and score nothing, because a number answer grows with its value and weighted miles would put the furthest applicant first. The last-job box is free text with no weight, since any words in it would score full marks. All eight questions are in Spanish as well as English.
Before your own texting number is switched on he answers the eight on your screening page instead of by text, with nothing about the knockouts or the score changed. The keyword on the mixer starts taking applications by text the day your carrier registration clears.
See how CrewFunnel works
A wall stands for generations. She notices it for about a week.
The last joint is struck, the brick is washed down, and the wall stands there looking as if it had always been part of the house. For the first week she notices it every time she pulls in, and she still remembers what was there before it. A review asked for that week gets written. After that it is just the wall, which is the highest compliment masonry gets and no help to you at all. The outfit with sixty reviews is not sixty times better than you; somebody there asks every customer, the week the pointing is done.
HurraBell™ does the asking. Once review requests are switched on, you mark the job done — from the inbox, from your phone, or from your job software through Zapier — and the customer gets one request in your words, with your own Google review link, after a delay you pick: an hour, unless you change it. Three days later, one email reminder, unless the link has been opened or the customer has since texted you, messaged you from your website or had a call logged on her thread.
Review requests aren’t switched on for new accounts yet. When they are, the request goes by email once your Google review link is saved on the HurraBell page and your mailing address on the Account page. A text goes as well where the customer ticked the box on your quote form or visit booking agreeing to a review-request text, and only once your carrier registration clears, the same wait as every text on this site; until then it is email only.
See how HurraBell worksOne recovered wall covers 57 months
And a single recovered patch of bad joints covers 5 of them. In a trade of five-figure walls, the arithmetic is not close.
The Tailgate Office Bundle
Instant quotes on your website, missed-call text-back and text-to-apply hiring (texts go out once texting is switched on), and, once switched on, a review request after every job, plus customers, jobs, estimates and invoices in one place. 30 days free, no credit card, no setup fee, cancel from the dashboard.
Start Free TrialOnly need one of the tools? After the trial you can keep just that one at its own price; the office stays with the Bundle.
Masonry questions we get asked
She gets a range, never one figure, with your disclaimer under it saying the final number comes after you measure the wall, check what it is standing on and see how the material gets to the back of the house. Write the rest in your own words, the footing where one is needed, wall ties, weeps, a cap and the site swept, and you have a bracket you can stand behind from the curb. She stops shopping, and the man who wanted forty feet of freestanding brick for two thousand dollars never fills in your callback form at all.
Because a percentage cannot carry it honestly, and the section above works through why. Full-bed stone costs a great deal more than brick installed, so the option would need a very large percentage, and a pooled percent lands on the whole additive subtotal, so the engine would charge that same uplift on the steps, the footing and pulling the old fence out, none of which cost a penny more because the wall is stone. On top of that, a stone quote is a quote for the stone itself: what is on the pallet, how much is usable face, how long a mason spends turning each piece. There is no rate card for that. So it routes to a site visit, the help text on the unit question names it and says where it went, and nothing on this page prints a per-square-foot figure for stone.
A stack rebuilt above the roofline, yes: that is brick, mortar, a crown and the flashing it sits in, and it is a mason's work. Sweeping, inspection, relining, caps and dampers, no: that is a chimney sweep, a different trade and a different truck, and the demo says so on the question rather than quoting it. Driveways, patios and walkways are the other line, and it is the unit that draws it: everything priced here is a square foot of wall face, which is vertical. Ground is concrete's and paving's. A brick wall around a patio is ours; the patio inside it is not, and we will tell you who pours it.
It is the opposite — it is the unit the trade actually uses. A step is a little wall with a tread on it: a poured core, brick on the rise, brick on the tread and a cheek wall each side, and the cost of it barely moves with its width. So it is a number question with a per-riser rate, $825 on the demo, and three genuinely costs three times one. Asking for it in square feet would invite her to measure the stoop like a patio and hand you an area that means nothing. It also keeps this form on the right side of the line: the treads are masonry, the flatwork they lead down to is somebody else’s form.
Because a homeowner can follow a sum. The engine adds every percentage answer into one figure and applies it once to the additive subtotal, so a freestanding wall at plus 30 and a new footing at plus 18 make plus 48 rather than multiplying out to plus 53.4, about $463 on the worked example above. She can follow that on a phone screen in the evening, and that is worth more to her than a more exact figure. The consequence that deserves saying out loud is the other half: because the pool lands on everything additive, the wall-type band is charged across the steps and the demolition allowance too, roughly $937 of that midpoint. If that is not how you price, put the wall type on a flat amount instead; the dashboard lets you.
Our demo does both things, deliberately, because the two services are not in the same position. New work carries a cold-weather plus 10% from 1 December to 15 March, and the disclaimer says what it buys: heated water, thawed sand and the work tented above freezing while it cures. That is a real cost, so it is a real number. Repointing carries no season and the shop simply does not book it in those months, because an open rowhouse front cannot be tented and the mortar would not cure — its disclaimer says that in words rather than pretending a percentage covers it. Refusing work honestly is a better answer than a discount for a job that would fail.
A garden one is, on the new-work service: +48% on the demo for the wider footing, the drainage stone, the fabric and the rebar down the cores. A 120 square foot block retaining wall on a new footing, nothing to take out, comes back $5,049 to $6,048 outside the winter window. The demo draws its line at a retaining wall over four feet, or one already leaning: that is an option on the site-visit service, which asks whether anything is moving and whether an engineer has been out, and never shows a price.
As a yes or no. The repair service asks whether there is a lintel, sill or window head to rebuild, and yes adds $850 on the demo. A 150 square foot wall at ground level on soft lime mortar, nothing spalled, comes back $2,339 to $2,917 without it and $3,209 to $4,002 with it, the $185 set-up charge inside both.
About fifteen minutes for your text-back messages and your yard hours, and about an hour for the eight questions and one rate card: your square foot of face, your step rate, your wall-type and unit percentages, your footing percent and your demolition allowances. Most of another hour goes on the repointing service, which has its own base fee, its own rates and a wider band. The review side takes a minute: once review requests are switched on for your account, paste your Google review link on the HurraBell page and your mailing address on the Account page. Each priced service needs its base fee or minimum before it goes live. You pay $199 a month for all four tools; there is no setup fee, no contract and no onboarding call.
Also pour flatwork, or lay pavers? The concrete page covers flatwork, the trade pages cover the rest, and for anything else, ask us.
Quote the wall while she is still looking at it.
Set it up tonight. Free for 30 days, no card, no setup fee, cancel from the dashboard.