When we first bought our 1970’s ranch style house a few years ago, I was not in love with the brick exterior any more than the interior, but it was not my first priority. After painting pretty much every inch of the interior though, I thought it was high time for the exterior to get a little love. Here is what we were starting with.
Now I know there are many people that prefer the look of natural brick, and I get it (kinda). They are usually the same ones that would never paint wood paneling. However, after I had been pinning many exterior images (check out my inspiration board here), mostly just for landscaping idea, I noticed a trend. Almost every single house that I pinned was white. My favorite image of all that served for my inspiration was this image..
I love everything about this house. The white brick, greenish gray doors and trim, the slate floor, I decided would serve as THE inspiration for our exterior. Even though my mind was made up on what I wanted, I was not exactly sure how I was going to execute it. First of all, hiring painters to paint perfectly pretty brick was not in our budget, but I also didn’t know if this was a job that I was willing and able to tackle on my own. However, usually where there’s a will, there’s a way. Especially in my house when it concerns design matters.
I started doing further research into what it would take for me to paint the brick with a typical latex paint. I was looking at a coat of primer, and a couple of coats of paint at least. Plus I kept finding warnings about the paint peeling, and the need to repaint every 5-10 years. I seemed like my dream of having a white house may just have to stay a dream.
Then I stumbled upon a blog post where a woman painted her own brick using hydrated lime, and it only cost $10. I thought it seemed like an interesting idea, but I wasn’t sure if I loved the weathered result that she had achieved with the lime washing. I really wanted my brick to be mostly solid white. I decided I would have to do a test before painting the exterior brick. We had already painted the brick fireplace in our living room, and the only other brick in the house was a wall in the sun room that used to be an exterior wall.
I decided that it would have to do, and since the rest of the house was pretty much white at this point, there was really no reason to keep it orangish brown. I found some hydrated lime online at Lowe’s, but it was not available at my nearest store, but it was available at a store about 10 miles away.
When I went to get the lime, I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for, and a store attendant tried to sell me on some garden lime, but luckily I had done enough research to know that isn’t what I need. I finally got some help in the area around the mortar and concrete mix aisle. The guy working in that area told me that he grew up in Mexico and that people lime washed their houses and citrus trees all the time and that goats would lick the houses because they love the taste! Lucky for me I don’t own any suburban goats (haha!). He also said that I was the first person he had ever heard of lime washing anything since he moved here to Texas. I was guessing that I’m either a trendsetter or maybe just the village idiot at that point. Here is what I ended up bringing home from Lowes…
My total cost for this was around $30, which I felt like I was winning there. Just a gallon a inexpensive paint would have cost me that much! I also picked up a couple of large things regular old iodized salt from Walmart. The recipe I used was pretty loose, and I found out of the course of this project that it doesn’t actually make a difference if you measure or not, the results are the same. I cannot find the original recipe I used for the life of me, but I started with about I gallon of hydrated lime, a cup of salt, and mixed in water until it resembled the consistency of skim milk. It is literally that easy!
When I started brushing it onto the brick, I kinda started to panic a little. It was pretty sheer as you can see here…
Little by little the brick turned whiter as the lime washed dried. It was like watching something magical!
And, it was really a lot easier than painting. I really was not going for perfection, but it could not have turned out more perfect.
I did the sun room in only a couple of hours, and we were tickled with the fabulous results, and it really gave me the confidence to tackle the exterior brick. Here is the “After”…
I did not do anything at all to prep the exterior brick other than rinse it with a water hose to wet it as I went. I also slightly changed by technique from the sun room and brushed the lime wash on in both directions to get a even solid coat on the brick and minimize the brush marks. It was pretty time consuming. It took me the better part of a four day stretch. I also had to make one more trip back to Lowe’s to pick up more hydrated lime. Overall though, I think the project was a HUGE success. My neighbors are constantly complimenting my work and wanting more information about how I lime washed the brick!
I am so in love with the way it turned out! Of course it will be much prettier in the summer when the sun is shining and the grass is greener!
I also changed the trim color to Benjamin Moore desert twilight, which I thought was pretty close to the inspiration photo, despite the fact that it said it was Texas Leather, which I sampled, but it was more of a brown color. We also added 12×12 slate tiles to the front porch, which were only $1.25 a square foot from Home depot (link here), and we updated the house numbers with these modern ones also from Home Depot. We also switched out the porch light to this LED lantern.
I know this is an extremely long post, but I really wanted to break down this process for anyone out there who might be considering lime washing, or even someone who wants white brick and is considering paint. If you do try this I would LOVE to hear from you, and if you have any questions at all please pop them below in the comments section and I will do my best to answer them!
