Lintel Replacement in Homer Glen, IL — Wide Openings, Long Steel, Real Load

Homer Glen builds wide. Three-car garages, tall picture windows, generous front entries, big two-story elevations on large lots. It's a good deal of what makes the housing here appealing.

It also means the longest spans of steel lintel in the region — carrying the most masonry, deflecting the most, and tolerating corrosion the least. Lintel replacement in Homer Glen, IL is disproportionately garage-door and picture-window work for exactly that reason. Paul Lally's Masonry has been doing it across Chicagoland since 1988.

What a lintel is

Brick can't span an opening on its own. Every window, door, and garage opening in a masonry or brick-veneer wall needs something beneath the brick to carry that load across the gap. That's the lintel — on essentially all of Homer Glen's housing stock, a piece of painted structural steel angle iron set into the wall so only a thin dark edge shows above the frame.

Simple, dependable, and with exactly one enemy: water.

Rust jacking, and why wide spans announce it first

1. Water reaches the steel — through failed mortar joints above the opening, gapped sealant at the head, missing or failed flashing, or a leaking gutter.
2. The steel corrodes.
3. Rust occupies several times the volume of the steel it came from.
4. That expansion has nowhere to go but up, lifting the brick course sitting on the lintel.
5. The mortar joint above opens into a horizontal crack. Bricks crack, step cracks radiate from the top corners, and the gaps admit more water.
6. More water, more rust, more expansion. It compounds.

Why the garage goes first: a wider span carries more masonry and deflects more to begin with, so it has less reserve. The same amount of section loss that a bathroom window shrugs off produces a visible, widening crack over a sixteen- or eighteen-foot garage opening.

And filling the crack accomplishes nothing. The crack isn't the problem — it's the visible result of steel that's still swelling behind it. Caulk it and it reopens, usually within a season.

Signs of a failing lintel

• A horizontal crack in the mortar joint directly above a window, door, or garage opening
• Step cracks running diagonally up from the top corners of an opening
• Cracked or displaced brick in the course immediately above
• Rust staining — orange-brown streaks bleeding down the brick below the lintel line
• A visibly bowed, sagging, or lifted brick course above the opening
• Flaking, layered rust on the exposed steel edge
• Loose brick above an opening you can rock by hand
• A garage door or window gone out of square, or one that binds
• Water stains on drywall above a window head or inside the garage

Treat, or replace? An honest framework

| Condition | Usually | |---|---| | Light surface rust, full section, no lifting | Clean, treat, protect + repoint above; monitor | | Moderate rust, section intact, slight joint opening | Treat and repoint, fix the water path, reassess | | Delaminating layered rust, measurable section loss | Replace | | Brick course already lifted or displaced | Replace | | Cracked or dropped brick above the opening | Replace, relay the masonry | | Wide span with any of the above | Replace — less tolerance for section loss |

Treating buys time when the steel still has its section. It isn't a permanent answer on badly corroded steel, and on a wide garage span we're more conservative about that call than we would be over a small window.

What waiting costs

Rust jacking never plateaus. The steel keeps losing section while it keeps expanding — you're simultaneously losing capacity and gaining destructive force, which is the worst combination in a load-bearing element.

The scope grows with it: replacing steel with a few courses of brick above is routine. Wait, and the brick above the opening loses bearing, more units crack, the opening goes out of square, and now you're rebuilding masonry, sourcing matching brick, and possibly dealing with a garage door that no longer fits its own opening.

A lintel is one of the few masonry items where waiting is genuinely, measurably expensive.

How Paul Lally's Masonry replaces a lintel

1. Inspect the opening and the whole elevation — whether the steel is salvageable or spent, and how many other openings are on the same clock.
2. Shore the masonry above. Before any steel moves, the brick above the opening is temporarily supported. On a wide garage span this step is not optional and not quick.
3. Carefully remove the brick courses sitting on the lintel, salvaging sound units — reused original brick is always the best match.
4. Cut out and remove the corroded steel.
5. Set the new lintel — properly sized for the span and load, with correct bearing at each end, and protected against corrosion.
6. Address the water path. Flashing and a drip edge above the opening where the detail allows, plus the joints and sealant at the head. On a veneer wall, weep holes above the flashing stay open — they're the drain.
7. Relay the brick on the new lintel, matching coursing and keeping the wall plane true.
8. Repoint with matched mortar — color, sand, type, and joint profile matched to the existing wall.
9. Remove shoring, clean up, and walk the work with you.

Materials

New lintels are structural steel sized for the span and load, with corrosion protection appropriate to the exposure — and on a wide opening, sizing is a decision rather than a default. Brick salvaged from the opening wherever possible, supplemented with matched units where originals cracked. Mortar matched for type, color, sand, and joint profile — standard Type N on most of Homer Glen's stock, Type S only where structure and exposure genuinely call for it.

Most of the housing here uses blended face brick, which is genuinely forgiving to match: a replacement only has to fall inside a tonal range the wall already contains.

The detail that decides how long the new lintel lasts isn't the steel grade. It's keeping water out of the wall above it — which is why lintel work, flashing, and tuckpointing get scoped together.

What drives the cost

• Width of the opening — a three-car garage span is a different piece of steel than a bedroom window
• Number of lintels in scope (they fail in batches)
• Height and access — ground floor versus a two-story elevation or tall gable end requiring staging
• How much brick must be removed, shored, and relaid
• Brick matching difficulty where original units cracked
• Flashing and water-path work above the opening
• Related repointing on the surrounding masonry

No honest mason prices a lintel from the driveway. Paul Lally's Masonry gives a free on-site estimate in writing.

Local context: why Homer Glen sees this so often

Homer Glen is a comparatively young community — incorporated in 2001, though its housing goes back further — characterized by large lots, generous setbacks, and substantial homes, mostly built through the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, with older farmhouse-era and mid-century stock on the acreage parcels.

Three things converge:

Wide openings everywhere. Three-car garages, tall picture windows, and generous entries mean long spans carrying real load — and on most of this stock the steel was never galvanized.

The steel is now the right age. Thirty to fifty years into service is precisely where ungalvanized angle iron begins losing section in this climate.

More exposure than most suburbs. Larger lots and open surroundings mean less shelter from neighboring structures, so wind-driven rain reaches the walls with more force — and it reaches the joints directly above openings, which is exactly where it gets to the steel.

Add Will County freeze-thaw cycling and the corrosion clock runs fast. The failures concentrate on west and north elevations and above the widest openings. If you're seeing that horizontal crack above the garage, look at the front windows on the same wall.

Related masonry services in Homer Glen

Lintel work is almost always scoped alongside tuckpointing and repointing above the opening, brick repair and brick replacement for cracked units, caulking and joint sealant at window heads, limestone and sill repair, and masonry waterproofing once the wall is sound. Where several openings and elevations are involved, see residential masonry restoration.

Worth reading: failing lintels and cracked brick above windows, step cracks in brick walls, and weep holes explained.

Nearby: brick replacement in Homer Glen, brick repair in Homer Glen, residential masonry restoration in Homer Glen, masonry waterproofing in Homer Glen, and lintel replacement in New Lenox.

Get the steel looked at before the brick decides for you

Paul Lally's Masonry Inc. is a family-owned, insured masonry contractor serving Chicago and the Chicagoland suburbs since 1988 — tuckpointing, brick repair and replacement, chimney repair and rebuilds, lintel replacement, masonry restoration, and waterproofing for residential and commercial properties. Built on Craftsmanship. Backed by Experience.

If your lintel can be cleaned, treated, and saved, we'll say so. If it's spent, we'll show you the steel — and tell you how many others on that wall are heading the same way. Our family name is on every job.

Free on-site estimates — call (708) 448-8866 or request an estimate online.