June 17, 2025

Your Building is Sending You Warning Signs. Are You Listening?

You walk past your building every day. But today, something catches your eye. A crack above your window. Rust stains on your bricks. Your front door that’s suddenly hard to close.

Your building is trying to tell you something important. And ignoring these signs could put your safety—and your wallet—at serious risk.

The Hidden Danger Above Your Head

There’s something called a lintel above every window and door in your building. Think of it as the invisible superhero holding up all the bricks and concrete above your openings. When that superhero starts failing, everything it’s been protecting comes crashing down—literally.

Most people have no idea what a lintel is until it’s too late. It’s that horizontal beam—usually steel—that spans across the top of your windows and doors. Its job is simple but critical: carry the massive weight of everything above it so your openings don’t collapse.

When your lintel fails, your building doesn’t just look bad. It becomes dangerous.

Your Building’s Cry for Help

Your building can’t speak, but it’s screaming for help through visual clues. The question is: are you listening?

You see rust stains below your windows. Those orange-brown streaks aren’t just ugly—they’re your lintel literally bleeding. When steel lintels corrode, they expand and push against your bricks with tremendous force. That rust you see is evidence of destruction happening inside your walls.

Cracks appear above your windows and doors. Horizontal cracks directly above the corners of openings aren’t settling—they’re structural failure in real time. Your lintel can no longer support the weight above it, and that stress is manifesting as cracks in your masonry.

You notice zigzag cracks spreading outward. These stepped cracks follow your mortar joints like a lightning bolt. They’re a clear sign that your masonry is shifting because it’s lost its support system. Think of it like removing a tent pole—everything starts to sag and crack.

Your lintel is visibly sagging. If you can actually see your lintel bowing or drooping, you’re looking at imminent structural failure. This is your building’s final warning before catastrophic damage occurs.

Your windows and doors won’t open properly. When lintels fail, they allow the structure to shift and distort. That sticky door or window that used to work fine? It’s not a minor annoyance—it’s a symptom of structural movement that’s getting worse every day.

Bricks near your openings are crumbling. When lintels fail, they create pressure points that cause bricks to crack, flake, and fall apart. This spalling isn’t just cosmetic damage—it’s evidence that your entire wall system is under stress.

The Domino Effect That Destroys Your Building

Here’s what most people don’t understand: lintel failure isn’t just about the lintel. It’s about everything that happens next.

When your lintel stops doing its job, the weight it was carrying doesn’t disappear. That massive load gets redistributed to parts of your building that were never designed to handle it. Your bricks start cracking under pressure they were never meant to bear. Your mortar joints begin failing as they’re forced to carry impossible loads.

But the real destruction comes from water. Every crack created by lintel failure becomes a highway for moisture to invade your walls. In Chicago’s brutal climate, that water freezes and expands, creating even more cracks. It’s a cycle of destruction that accelerates with every season.

Water doesn’t just damage your exterior. It travels through your walls, creating mold, destroying insulation, and damaging your interior finishes. What started as a small structural issue becomes a health hazard that threatens your family’s wellbeing.

Your building’s beauty disappears too. Those elegant lines and pristine brickwork that once made you proud become a source of embarrassment. Cracked, stained, and crumbling masonry destroys your curb appeal and your property value.

The Cost of Waiting

Every day you ignore these warning signs, the damage gets worse and the repair gets more expensive. What might cost a few thousand dollars to fix today could cost tens of thousands tomorrow.

We’ve seen buildings where owners waited too long. Small lintel repairs became complete wall reconstructions. Minor brick replacement became major structural work. Manageable problems became financial disasters.

But the real cost isn’t just financial. It’s the stress of living with a building that’s literally falling apart around you. It’s the embarrassment of owning property that looks neglected. It’s the fear that your building might actually be unsafe.

Your Path Forward

You have two choices. You can keep ignoring the warning signs, hoping they’ll somehow fix themselves while the damage gets worse and more expensive. Or you can take action now, while the solution is still manageable.

The right mason can assess your lintel situation and fix it before it becomes a crisis. They’ll replace failing lintels, repair the damaged masonry, and restore your building’s structural integrity. They’ll stop the water intrusion and prevent further damage.

Your building will be safe again. Strong again. Beautiful again.

The Stakes Are Real

This isn’t just about maintenance—it’s about your safety and your financial future. Buildings with failing lintels don’t just look bad. They’re genuinely dangerous. Masonry can fall. Structural collapse can occur. People can get hurt.

Your building is sending you warning signs right now. The question is: what are you going to do about it?

Don’t let lintel failure destroy your building and your peace of mind. The solution exists. The technology exists. The skilled craftsmen exist.

What happens next is up to you.

Your building is counting on you to be its hero. Are you ready to answer the call?