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txmarti

What do you think of this brick color?

TxMarti
11 years ago

The brick layer finished Friday and I started painting the trim today but it was too hot to finish, so please ignore the odd painting above the brick.

I just want to know what you think of the brick color. Like or dislike? Would you paint the whole house rather than have this on your house?

{{gwi:1757471}}

Close up

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Comments (15)

  • cyn427 (z. 7, N. VA)
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I like it!

  • graywings123
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Me too!

  • awm03
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Looks great with the trim -- nice choice!

  • User
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I don't like it---but then I do not like my own brick, either, so yours is in excellent company :-)

  • dedtired
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    It's very nice. I wish a former owner had not painted the brick on the front of my house. Brick never needs to be repainted, but painted brick does.

  • TxMarti
    Original Author
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I appreciate all your answers. Now I'm going to give you the full story. Oh and btw, the white paint on the gable is the primer I put on this morning. The yellow is the primer that was on the hardiplank, but it isn't good primer so I'm re-priming it.

    The brick in the photos I posted has been stained.

    This is our original brick color.
    {{gwi:1757473}}

    When we built the garage (you can see a little of the brick on it on the far right of the above photo) and filled in the opening on the house where the garage door was, dh bought the brick. I don't know how many places he went to, but he found the brick he did buy at Acme. It is the right size, and has the same basic colors in it, mostly yellow/tan with some whites, some browns, and some rusty reds. But it is a different type brick. Not only the texture, but it has more whites, the browns are darker, and the reds are more brown than red.
    This is our original brick
    {{gwi:1757474}}

    And this is the brick dh bought
    {{gwi:1757475}}

    They would really stand out if we painted the whole house one color.

    So when we started this addition, I drove to every brick place within 100 miles and couldn't find ANY brick that matched our original OR the stuff dh bought. Acme no longer carried it, but they did have a yellow/tan brick that was the right size and flat like our original. But it was just yellow/tan. I kept looking and there were no other bricks with a yellow/tan body and brown and red on them. After looking at our original brick, we thought we might be able to stain it to match. This is an original, and it really looks like it was painted with a spray bottle or something. It wasn't, it is some kind of powder that is put on before the bricks are fired, but it LOOKS like paint.
    {{gwi:1757476}}

    We ordered the yellow/tan brick and when it arrived, dh mixed some masonry stain to match our three other colors. I wanted to sponge it on, and tried one with a sea sponge and it didn't look right at all. Then dh set up a bunch of the bricks and sprayed them with a sprayer. I didn't think they looked like our original, they were too solidly painted, but the color matched and they weren't hideous. Yet.

    Before the bricklayer got here, we set up three stacks of bricks, a big yellow stack and two smaller stacks for the browns and reds. We set up similar stacks for each side to make it easier for him. It was the same bricklayer who did our garage, so we knew he would do a good job. I had been cleaning the mortar off the old bricks for weeks so there would be enough to do two places where the brick touched the old brick. But for some reason, the bricklayer started laying them with one red, one brown, and one yellow, where the rest of the house had 2 or 3 times as many yellow as the other colors. When he ran out of the red and brown from our stacks, he went around to the other side of the house and took the brick from there. It looked horrible, like a checkerboard. When we noticed what he was doing, we asked him to put more yellow in, like the rest of the house, and we thought we might be able to clean the stain off the brick he had already laid. No such luck. The more I looked at it, the more I hated it. For one thing, even with the color match, it just didn't match our brick. Too new looking. Also, long story short, we ran out of brick and had to buy brick that had a tan body, and it was pretty obvious next to the yellow ones.

    So this morning, I decided if I couldn't fix the checkerboard by removing the stain, I'd remove it by taking out the rest of the yellows. I used a flat sponge and figured out how to put the stain on the edge and slap it onto the brick to look like our original, and did the whole wall with mostly reds and some browns. I also had an offwhite stain that I used on just a few. And then I slapped a little offwhite on top of all the colored brick to give it some dimension and kind of age it a little.

    Here's a wide shot of the first photo, showing the rest of the house, and I've sponged on a little stain to some of those brick too.

    {{gwi:1757477}}

    Now that you know the whole story, you know that I either have to do the rest of the house or paint the whole thing. BTW, the old brick don't take nearly as much work as the new yellow brick since they already have the off white on every brick. The only trick to doing them will be climbing a ladder to do the fireplace (my biggest fear), and a hedge on the far side of the house.

    So NOW what do you think?

  • leafy02
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I also have a variegated-brick house, and I like mine quite a bit. My whole neighborhood is bricks, and there are painted bricks, all-one-color bricks, and many multi-color variegated mixes. There are houses I like in all of them, but I've often thought that if I had one of the brick colors I don't like, I would paint it because I do like the look of painted brick. It's classic and can provide a cooler look, especially in a subdivision full of red brick.

    I think in order to say Yay or Nay to your brick blend, one would need to see a photo of the full house front including the landscape--to see the "big picture". In the photos you provided, the close up photo looked like it had too many black bricks in it for me, but in the further-away photo, it looked much better. And the setting is always important.

    Any full-frontal pics?

  • User
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Wow, I really like it. It looks like it's natural. I've never heard of anyone doing that before and love how outside of the box it is. Lots of work but the rewards will be huge once it's all done.

  • martinca_gw sunset zone 24
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Everything leafy said.( especially re. Being one of many in your 'hood). I like your brick..Maybe. It may be too busy for me. Then again, I am a huge fan of painted brick, though it may be impractical in very cold climates.

  • TxMarti
    Original Author
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    This picture seems washed out but it was taken on a bright day and today was cloudy so that's probably the difference. It's mostly light brick, but not quite that light.
    {{gwi:1363782}}

    I have always disliked the color of our brick. The predominant color that yellow/tan that is really the color of baby puke, or that crayon that no one ever wanted to use called flesh. So this is an improvement to me, but I am biased because I disliked the puke so much.

    My tentative plans for the front are to rip out the sidewalk that goes from the front door and ends in the front yard. I've already pulled most of the plants out of the flower bed, and removed the edge block. I'd like to have a sidewalk that curves around the front room and has more room for flower bed beside it. Right now I have about 9 inches, not enough to grow anything.

    I did the three sides of the new room in about 6 hours today, and some brick around the rest of the house just to start the blending. The new brick was almost all yellow except the bottom 5 or 6 rows where he had done the checkerboard. The rest of the house goes much faster because it already has some color on it.

    I'd prefer not quite as much of the dark, but if I didn't, it would be heavy on the brown at the bottom and where we enclosed the garage because that brick had a lot of really dark brown, and I wanted it even.

    Thanks for your responses, I am feeling a lot better about it now. I had one of those "oh crap what have I done now" feelings most of the morning.

  • User
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I think your solution is frickin' awesome! For the life of me I cannot follow exactly how you got here (a dab of this, a daub of that), but I likee the finished product!

  • leafy02
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Now that I see the whole house, I say don't paint the brick unless you want to. Since the whole house isn't brick, your mix of colors doesn't look "too busy". I like your idea about pulling the walkway further from the house so you'll have more planting room, too.

  • awm03
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I'm going to respectfully disagree with leafy. Your stained brick has so much more character than the old brick, that I think it would lend some richness to your home. The brick is the prettiest feature.

  • Alittleapple
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    When I see your whole house, I feel the brick is good as a netural color. If you really want to paint the wall, the selection of color may be a little difficult.

  • TxMarti
    Original Author
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Thank you javachick. I wish I had thought of doing it this way from the beginning, I could have made the new brick blend perfectly I think, instead of doing a coverup. As it is, I think I'm too far into it to not do the rest of the brick. Our house has been blah so long, it's taking me a while to warm up to so much color. I do wish I had left more of the yellows, but gee, I guess I can stain them yellow if I want, lol.