Since moving into this 1930s stone carriage house earlier this year, I have had three projects involving stonework done: the leaking chimney was re-pointed, windows were installed "brick to brick," and rubble foundation walls were patched to stop water infiltration. The structure is stone with concrete inside - probably an early slipstone? I have no idea what any of the existing mortar was. Now that I've read up on the horrors of using the wrong kind of mortar, I am afraid I may have done more harm than good - or at best taken care of immediate problems but set myself up for later ones. Each job was done by a different contractor. My question: how can I know what kind of mortar was the right one, and whether it was used?

The other thing I am now kicking myself about is insulation. We had an opportunity to completely insulate one side of the house when it was all opened, and we let the contractor put in fiberglass batting against the tarred concrete. He made the wall much thicker in order to accommodate lots of it. In retrospect I think we should have used hard foam which wouldn't have absorbed moisture through the stone/concrete wall...

There is lots of information available about how to retrofit old stone houses, but I don't think it is relevant to a structure like mine. Thanks for any advice out there!