These two services get quoted against each other constantly, and they shouldn’t compete on price alone, because they produce different objects: one is your chimney, kept; the other is a new chimney where yours stood. Both legitimate, chosen rightly. The two-axis decision:
Axis one: what survives
Restoration needs original fabric worth conserving, brick that tests sound, coursing that holds line, a structure whose failures are surface and joint rather than body and base. The same probing assessment that draws rebuild lines answers this: mortar sampling, unit soundness, core condition. A century chimney with weathered joints and a bad crown but solid brick: restoration’s ideal patient. One with through-body spalling and course failure: past conservation, the fabric itself is spent, and rebuild is just the truthful word.
Axis two: what originality is worth
The hybrid scopes nobody names
Real projects mix the poles: restore the visible, character-bearing faces while rebuilding the failed top in matched material; conserve the lower original stack and rebuild from the shoulder; restore the exterior shell around a modern lining system. Scope follows the evidence per course, restoration where fabric survives, replacement where it doesn’t, matched so the seam disappears.