Advanced Masonry Restoration

Advanced Masonry Restoration has worked on Upper Midwest masonry since 1998, out of 2939 Yorkton Boulevard in St. Paul. The firm covers masonry cleaning, repair, replacement and restoration, including tuckpointing, terracotta, brick and stone work, concrete repair, facade work and waterproofing, with crews trained through the Bricklayers Training Center and signatory to BAC Local 1 MN/ND and Local 563. It handled masonry and exterior stone repairs on the Minnesota State Capitol restoration, a job that produced more than 20,000 individual repairs and roughly 6,000 carved replacement pieces of Georgia marble. Its Split Rock Lighthouse restoration at Two Harbors took a Minnesota Concrete and Masonry Contractors Association honor award and a Preservation Alliance of Minnesota stewardship award.

The project list is a tour of Minnesota landmarks. The Lovness Estate at Stillwater, the Half Moon Battery at Historic Fort Snelling, the A-Mill Artists Lofts in Minneapolis, and Split Rock Lighthouse at Two Harbors. Current work is at the historic Calumet Inn in Pipestone.

The Mill City Museum north wall is the job that best shows the regulatory side of this trade: it was completed within the requirements of the Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Board, the State Historic Preservation Office and the National Park Service, and took a 2019 Honor Award for Excellence in Masonry Design and Construction from the Minnesota Concrete and Masonry Contractors Association.

The award record runs deeper than that one job. The firm took an MCMCA Honor Award in 2018 for the Minnesota State Capitol interior renovations, Tom Miller was named MCMCA Contractor of the Year in 2019, and Midtown Exchange earned a National Preservation Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 2006.

Crews are trained through the Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers training centre, which is the usual route to competence on lime mortars, terracotta and carved replacement stone.

The waterproofing side is a distinct scope rather than a line item – caulking removal and installation, through-wall flashing, plus exploration and testing to find where water is actually entering before anything is rebuilt.

The firm works on new buildings as well as registry properties, and collaborates with architects, engineers and owners on standards and best practice. Estimates are free, and the office at Yorkton Boulevard keeps standard weekday hours.