Recently we had our house painted, thank God! It was brown. Mojon brown (If you know, you know!). Just like every other finish in our home. People, mi gente! We waited and lived with that sad finish for the past 4 years, every year hoping we’d finally be able to afford a paint job. Finally, we were able to do it and do it right! If there’s one good thing about being too broke to get what you want right when you want it, it’s that when you finally get what you’ve been waiting for, you make the right decision! We said “byeeeee!,” to the old brown color with the decision to use Alabaster by Sherwin-Williams for the main body of the house and brick whitewash! Want to learn how to whitewash exterior brick easily? Then come see!
Before Painting The House 
Before Painting The House With Pergola
The Concept
We wanted to paint the main body of the house white and introduce black on the window trim. To add a warm contrast we stained the pergola and railing in the porch area. Remember how the pergola was white? Well, white on white seemed lame and paint stripping in order to stain proved too time-intensive. As it turns out its more feasible to just rebuild the pergola. We’ll save that story for another post!
Onto The Brick
Since we were working with a limited budget we decided to paint the siding of the house first and leave all the brick for later and DIY it to save money, cuz ya know, that’s how we do!
As we weren’t sure if we wanted to wash or paint the brick we devised a plan. First, we would whitewash it with the same color our house was painted and if we weren’t satisfied we could always just paint it. And so we did. We tried out different paint to water ratios and decided on 3 parts water 2 parts paint (top section on image).
Materials
- Alabaster by Sherwin Williams (white paint)
- Water
- Cheap paintbrushes
- Good attitude :p
The How
We washed the bricked first, just using water, and our pressure washer. This took off any dirt so our whitewash job would adhere nicely.
Then it was just a matter of painting the brick. We used a cheap brush which worked great, but you can also use a masonry paintbrush. We ended up doing two coats of this mixture as after the first coat dried off I decided we still wanted a little more coverage.
Tip: We also tried using a roller, don’t do this, unless you don’t mind splatter everywhere or you mask off the surrounding area really well.
A quick coat of paint on the front door and there you have it! I must say I am in love with the exterior of the house. I adore how the brick came out and those wood accents are just the cherry on top, wouldn’t you agree? Now that you know how to whitewash exterior brick easily, what project will you tackle?
Check out our fireplace makeover for more inspiration on DIY color washing brick.
Head down to the comments below and let us know what you think? Have you tried any brick washing?