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About Restored Masonry
by Amanda Howland
Restored Masonry is my heritage restoration business based in Ontario. I work exclusively on historic brick and stone restoration and the rehabilitation of buildings built before 1940.
My masonry experience started in my backyard firepit. My apprenticeship led me to heritage chimneys in The Glebe, restoring rural homes after the Ontario-Quebec derecho, and working on some of Canada's most interesting heritage buildings: Parliament Hill, the Supreme Court of Canada, and the former Ottawa City Registry Office. These projects demanded exacting standards of material compatibility, documentation, and craft; the same standards I bring to every project I undertake.
Heritage masonry is not a category of general contracting. It requires an understanding of how lime mortar systems behave, how locally fired brick ages, how moisture moves through a wall assembly, and why the wrong repair, however well-intentioned, can cause more damage than the problem it was meant to fix. No two buildings are exactly alike, and every repair I make is tailored exactly to its needs.
A good stone mason aims to make the work look unremarkable. A good repair is invisible so that the building shines in its own right.
This year, I am grateful to be working under the direction of Dr. Christopher Cooper, and joining the Edifice Atelier guild of skilled artisans. As an expert for over four decades in the restoration, rehabilitation, and design of historic structures, both residential and commercial, across five continents, his mentorship deepens my understanding of the discipline considerably. As an architect, mason, woodworker, artist, writer and professor, his multi-disciplinary approach is central to where my career is headed.
For more of Dr Cooper's work visit
Mission
My hope is that every heritage building I work on outlasts my involvement with it by another century. That the repairs are so well matched, so materially compatible, and so carefully executed that future owners never know where the original ended and the restoration began. Ontario's older brick and stone buildings carry something that cannot be manufactured: the material record of the people and communities that built this province.
To restore them properly is not just a technical obligation. It is the most sustainable thing you can do with a building that is already standing. No new materials extracted, no embodied energy wasted, no character lost to a shortcut. The work either lasts, or it wasn't done right.