Lintel Replacement in Palos Park, IL — When the Steel Above Your Window Starts Growing

Steel that rusts does not simply get thinner. It gets bigger — rust occupies several times the volume of the metal it came from. Put that expansion under a few hundred pounds of brick with a window frame below it, and the only direction left is up.

That is why lintel replacement in Palos Park, IL is one of the most common repairs we are called out for, and why the homeowner almost always describes the same thing: a clean horizontal crack running the full width of a window, sometimes with a rust-colored stain weeping out of the joint beneath it.

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. Free on-site estimates — call (708) 448-8866.

What a lintel is, in plain language

A lintel is the structural member that carries the masonry above an opening. Cut a hole in a brick wall for a window, a door, or a garage, and something has to hold up the brick that would otherwise be sitting where the hole is.

On most Palos Park houses, that something is a steel angle iron — an L-shaped bar bedded into the wall, with its horizontal leg supporting the first course of brick above the opening. On older stone-fronted homes it may be a limestone lintel instead. Both fail, but they fail differently, and the repair is different.

Why steel lintels fail here

Steel rusts when water and oxygen reach it. In a brick wall, water reaches it constantly — through the joints, down behind the face, off the window head, out of a gutter that overflows in the same spot every storm.

Older lintels went in with little or no protection: no galvanizing worth the name, no flashing above, no drip edge. Seventy years of Illinois weather later, the steel has been wet more often than it has been dry.

As it corrodes, it swells. Rust jacking is the trade term, and it produces a very recognizable set of symptoms:

Signs of a failing lintel

• A straight horizontal crack in the mortar joint directly above a window, door, or garage opening
• Rust staining bleeding down the brick below that joint
• The course above the opening lifted slightly out of plane with the rest of the wall
• Cracked or displaced brick at the corners of the opening, sometimes stepping diagonally away
• A visible steel edge at the window head that is flaking, delaminating in layers, or blistering its paint
• On garages, a sag or bow across a wide span
• Windows or doors that have gone out of square at the head

Palos Park, specifically

Palos Park sits on the wooded ridge country along the Cal-Sag and the Palos preserves, and it has a housing stock unlike the denser suburbs around it — more custom and semi-custom homes on larger, treed lots, a strong postwar and mid-century layer, ranches and split-levels through the fifties, sixties, and seventies, and newer builds mixed in.

Three things about that stock matter for lintel work.

Wide openings. Palos Park houses tend toward big picture windows, bay windows, sliding-door openings, and two- and three-car attached garages. Wide spans put more load on the steel and produce more visible movement when the steel gives. A twelve- or sixteen-foot garage lintel that has rusted is a different job from a bedroom window.

Heavy tree cover. The mature canopy that makes the village what it is also means shaded elevations that dry slowly, gutters that fill with leaves and overflow at the same corner every fall, and walls that stay wet longer after rain. Slow-drying walls corrode lintels faster.

Grade and exposure. Homes tucked into the ridge and ravine topography here often have one elevation that takes the weather and one that never dries. The lintels on those two walls are almost never in the same condition.

How we do a lintel replacement

1. Assess the opening and the wall. Whether the steel is salvageable, how far the corrosion has gone, what else on the elevation is in the same condition.
2. Shore the masonry. Temporary support goes under the brick above the opening before anything comes out. This is the step that separates a proper lintel job from a dangerous one.
3. Remove the brick above the lintel carefully, saving units for reuse wherever they can be matched.
4. Cut out and remove the corroded steel.
5. Set new protected steel, sized for the span, bedded properly at both bearing ends.
6. Install flashing and a drip edge above the opening where the detail allows, so water leaving the wall goes out rather than onto the new steel.
7. Relay the brick, reusing the salvaged units and blending any replacements for color, size, and texture.
8. Repoint with mortar matched to the existing joints, then clean down.

Materials

Properly sized and protected steel. Mortar matched to the wall in type — Type N or Type S as the masonry calls for — and in color and joint profile, so the repaired head does not read as a patch. Salvaged brick reused wherever possible, because nothing blends with a seventy-year-old wall like the brick already in it. Flashing and drip detailing at the head, because the water that killed the last lintel has not gone anywhere.

What drives the cost

Span width. Number of openings. Height and access — a second-story bedroom window needs staging that a ground-floor slider does not. How much masonry has to be shored and relaid above the opening. Whether the brick can be matched or has to be sourced. Whether stone lintels or sills are involved alongside the steel.

We do not publish prices, because no honest number exists before someone looks at the opening. Free on-site estimate, in writing — call (708) 448-8866.

Why not wait

A lintel is a structural member. Once the steel has lost section, the wall above the opening is being carried by a member that is no longer what it was designed to be, and the crack that started as a cosmetic annoyance becomes displaced brick, then loose brick over a doorway people walk under.

Waiting also grows the scope. A lintel caught early is a lintel, some shoring, and a few courses of brick. A lintel left for another five winters is often a lintel plus a larger section of rebuilt wall.

Serving Palos Park and the surrounding southwest suburbs

We work throughout Palos Park and the communities around it — Palos Heights, Palos Hills, Orland Park, Lemont, Homer Glen, and Worth. Related work: lintel repair and replacement, brick repair, tuckpointing and repointing, and limestone and sill repair.

If you want to understand what you are looking at before you call anyone, read our guide to failing lintels and cracked brick above windows.

Get it looked at before it moves

Family-owned since 1988, insured, and our name is on every job. Built on Craftsmanship. Backed by Experience.

Get a free on-site estimate — or call (708) 448-8866.