Painting brick facing and color choice / finish (floor, vinyl, window)

[mrs1885]

So, while we were in Strasburg last weekend hubby saw some old brick homes that had been painted. I've been asking him for a couple years about painting the brick. It's just brick facing, and while from the street it looks passable, as soon as you get close you can see what a crappy job they did on it. The brick isn't in a straight line any place, the brick itself is mismatched. It's just horrendous. I'd seen several other homes that were painted brick and it looks a heck of a lot nicer that what ours looks like now.

We're also planning on doing some upgrades / renovations outside eventually. There are 2 hideous rock flower beds along the front of the house. One under the bay window in the front dining room and the other blocks the entrance off from the front yard. I want to get rid of them both eventually, but that one that's blocking off the front porch from the front yard I've already started tearing out. They did a really good job on that damn thing though and it's much harder than I'd thought it would be. The idea is eventually it'll all be open and we can put up a front porch swing in front of the library window with a couple rockers.

The front yard where that is at will be a slate patio and we'll move the entrance to the front door over where the other flower bed is and put a very small little deck up there. Very small. Like 6x8. Super small. But it will be a better entrance than we have now.

Anyway, lots of changes eventually, but for now I want to paint. Since our house is really old - the home goes back to before the county records - I'd like to stick to historic colors. The colors that really stood out to us were a pretty colonial blue with cream trim and a red door. So, that's what I'm thinking for our house. I picked up paint chips today at Lowe's and next weekend I'll start on the back of the house. The only people that can see that are the cattle in the pasture behind us. That way if we don't like it, it's not hurting anything until we find another color palatte.

The colors we're using are:

Belle Grove Victory Blue for the main part of the house
Woodrow Wilson Presidential White for the trim - it matches the siding on the upstairs part of the house
And Cooper Molera Fandango Red for the doors

They are all National Trust for Historic Preservation colors through Valspar. Any clue on what finish we should use? Flat, semi-gloss, gloss, etc? I've never had to paint the outside of a house before.


So, the first link is to a home that's painted the colors similar to what we're looking at. That's followed by a picture of the house. Combining the colors on our home, what do you guys think?

http://www.preservegarneau.org/images/hist...gnationpic3.jpg (broken link)

[golfgal]

The link does not work. Personally I am not a fan of painted brick but I would use a semi-gloss so you can clean if needed.

[desertsun41]

I agree with Golfgal. Painted brick is so very fugly. But your description of the fake brick sounds worse. I would like to see you just save your pennies and budget in rippng them off and down to the sheething then do some nice vinyl siding.

I know brick is less costly in your state then any other but if you get ideas of redoing your whole house in "real" red brick, you will have to dig and pour a footing to carry the weight of those bricks. That can be more trouble and money then you wish for. Just reside with a nice vinyl siding which is also customary in your area.

[mrs1885]

Originally Posted by desertsun41

I agree with Golfgal. Painted brick is so very fugly. But your description of the fake brick sounds worse. I would like to see you just save your pennies and budget in rippng them off and down to the sheething then do some nice vinyl siding.

I know brick is less costly in your state then any other but if you get ideas of redoing your whole house in "real" red brick, you will have to dig and pour a footing to carry the weight of those bricks. That can be more trouble and money then you wish for. Just reside with a nice vinyl siding which is also customary in your area.

The brick is truly hideous! I'm not a brick fan to begin with, but this is even worse than usual. It's mostly that red color, but on the side of the house it's like they ran out, so they bought whatever they could find. Some is a cream color - and it's like a painted cream, not the rough red bring like the rest. Some is a grey color. And they slapped it along the bottom of the house right in front too. In the spring / summer / fall it's not too obvious because I planted a butt load of lilies that grow high enough to disguise it, but in the late fall and winter it's blaringly obvious. Then there are some bricks that look like they got a can of grey spray paint and painted round dots on some of them. And on the side with the different color brick, it looks like some of them sat in water about 3 feet high. Now, the side of my yard slopes drastically - we're on a rolling piece of land and we sit high - so I know it wasn't flooded, but that's what it looks like. It's really beyond horrible.

So, no, won't replace it with brick. And I don't like vinyl siding. I know it's fairly maint free, but it just looks too trailer park-ish for me. We've got it on the upstairs portion and that's fine. Don't mind a bit of it up high where we would have a heck of a time painting anyway. But the entire home just would be too much for me.

What we'd eventually like to do is either rip off the brick and stucco the first floor or just stucco right over the brick. If we planned on staying in the house any amount of time we'd talked about putting stone along the bottom half of the first floor after getting it stucco'd - like up to the bottom of the windows. And then run it up the sides of the bay window where the dining room is and up the chimney and such. But we're talking about building a cabin in NE KY in the next 4 or 5 years, so I"m not going to dump that much money into it. So for now, paint it's gotta be.