After reading about the pitfalls of painting brick I'm over the fear and ready to face a new and painted brick home (and yes it looks like it's 50 years old, but the house is only 10 years old...don't ask!). A previous poster's home, that is much grander and more stately then our little home will ever be was the motivation I needed to go for it!

Can anyone tell me what color would look the best, given our ugly duckling's appearance that could make it into something that I know won't be a swan but maybe one of the lesser ugly stepsisters? :-)

We have removed most of the plantings in the front and are making the bed much smaller and more manageable with more grass (a work in progress that looks terrible atm) but I'd like to add window boxes to the front and maybe the side windows. Should we remove the shutters all together?! Right now they look like a little old man in Florida wearing sandals with white socks!!! I was thinking maybe of a deep taupe with black shutters if we opt to keep the shutters? We are on a private lane with other gorgeous homes along the waterfront and need help to not be the ugly little house on the street anymore!

All input is much appreciated!!! Thank you!

Kat :)

I dunno about the taupe... it's awfully close to what you have now. But painting the shutters a dark color is exactly the right thing to do.

A little history, the house is only 10 years old as I stated before, and it was built by our neighbor who is in his 80's so apparently he thought this was the "new" style!!

I realized after I posted that the picture is one we took from our car before we even purchased the house!

Another closer picture, I know, it's not making it any better!

The other houses on the street are all lovely I swear and the setting is wonderful! An inlet behind us and across the street a large River. The other houses are tan, blue, and a soft yellowish tan color and then another brick (you guessed it, the man who built our house!).

Here is the setting, at least it's pretty! This is why we purchased the house!

Kat :)

Here is our inspiration for a simple cosmetic fix, but it proved too costly...not sure why it was so expensive but we got several bids! We just couldn't justify putting that amount just to make it look nicer without any other benefit like added square footage!

If money were no object we would have torn the house down and built something like this, but it had perfectly good bones on the interior and wasn't very old. Plus getting permits to do anything when you live on the water is murder!

For anyone who HAS painted their brick, did you do anything to prepare the brick and what paint brand do you recommend using?

Thanks,

Kat :)

I was the one who said your house is screaming to be painted... I apologize for the abruptness of my response. Sometimes I do shoot my mouth off.

I totally agree with Justgotabme -- a railing on your porch would be wonderful.

Kat :)

Thanks!

Kat :)

I just wish my home was a cute cottage like so many I see on here! I'm trying to make the inside cottage like or at least homey feeling. We've had lots of hurdles to overcome in making it anything other than blecky! :-)

Don't mean to get off topic but here is a picture of the before and after of our kitchen makeover (the kitchen isn't done yet) but you can see that the ugliness didn't stop at the door. It was all I could do to get my husband to even look at this place. He hates brick and he hates ramblers! I wish it was as easy to change the exterior as it is the interior. The hassle has been huge but at least we made changes we love.

Before of kitchen (before we moved in)

After of kitchen, not yet finished but from the same angle as the "before" shot

Different view

Kat :)

I also love the DIY garage door makeover! Any time the garage doors are on the front of the house, they make a big visual impression.

What I'd like to suggest is that you get some professional architectural advice. I KNOW you're on a budget, but right now, there are tons of architects who are unemployed or underemployed, and by posting a 'gig' (as opposed to a job) on Craigslist, you could easily and quickly find several who would be happy to consult for a few hours time to improve your home's 'face'.

We're good with the pretty details and certainly priced right!
But when it comes to the 'bones', sometimes it's SO worth it to hire a professional.

This is why we are trying to minimize the cost of the exterior, but if the house looks terrible from the outside, and good from the inside it just seems such a shame to me! Maybe we can blindfold guests as they come inside! ;)

Please excuse the pics as we still don't have things like crown and base mouldings and we still have stuff everywhere as we've played musical chairs with our stuff from room to room as we've progressed!

The hall bath "before"

Hall Bath "after" almost done, but not quite

When you walked in the front door you were staring right at a wall and then another wall around the corner separated the LR from the DR. This picture is from when the previous owners (a lovely elderly couple in their early 90's lived here)

A before of the tiny walled off DR from before we purchased the house

The awkward bumped out stove/fireplace we never used!

Walls between the LR/DR/Entryway are all gone and it's one open space now. We were going to put in pillars, hence the electrical wire still in the ceiling but decided against it at the last minute, they blocked the view of the water from the LR too much.

Wall where the ugly stove used to be, unused wood flooring and columns stacked in the corner until we clear the garage out! That could take years! We put in all new windows and new schoolhouse trim throughout. The trim in the kitchen has also been replaced now.

The old family room area. We added 2 new windows to create a wall of windows and removed the wall separating it from the kitchen and raised the kitchen windows and put the sink and more cabinetry on that wall. I also painted the kitchen "green" to help me through the interim period before we the kitchen remodel started.

New family room windows and flooring

New seating area in family room, still need to slipcover the loveseat to match the new blue and cream sisal rug. And remove all of the junk on it, and on the floor! Besides the kitchen I think it is my favorite part of the house, when all the windows are open it's so nice to sit and look out over the water and my neighbors beautiful garden!

The previous owners used the mbr as a reading/music/exercise room and it had a small window on each wall and it was dark and didn't take advantage of the view.

Now with 3 big windows on the water side we can see heron and egrets on one side and deer and wild turkey on the field side!

Phew, sorry lots of pictures!

Kat :)

I really don't think the brick is that bad. In fact, I think your house is kind of cute. Before painting the brick I would paint the shutters and door to make them pop a little more. Maybe beefing up the porch, too. I just don't think painting the brick would really change how your house looks.

As far as painting brick, GO FOR IT! Here are before and after's of my house -- many thanks are owed to the posters here (including squirrelheaven and chicory) who helped me plan and visualize:

before:

after:

As far as methods, we prepped by powerwashing, let it dry, then rolled primer and two coats of paint on ourselves. Don't remember the exact type of primer and paint, I just went to the local BM store and asked what they recommended for painting exterior brick. We used a roller that was designed to get into the crevices but had to brush primer into the mortar joints because the roller didn't get in there for the first coat.

Good luck!

My kitchen paint is BM Heather Gray, it's a very cool shade of green/gray that changes colors throughout the day!

Kat :)

Sweeby, thanks for the info about architects, I didn't know you were an architect! We did have someone draw up plans that were lovely when we were considering raising the roof. He also tried putting a "lookout" tower of some sort on the front for us, but those drawings did all look a lot like prison towers. It's hard to make a lovely widows walk on a house like ours! Even though we are close to metro DC it's very hard to find a good architect. Several that I contacted weren't interested in just doing drawings and since we weren't really at a point to commit to the whole second story addition plan they turned us away without much discussion. :-(

Kat :)

No help here, just a comment. Now that you have transformed the inside, you almost have to do the same on the outside. I understand that, but it is sad that you dislike your house so much. It is a charming, unassuming rambler, built from a design popular the 1970s. It apparently doesn't fit in the neighborhood, but in and of itself, it is a lovely house. It is not an ugly duckling, it is just different than the other houses.

Will you be able to recoup your investment when you sell? Or is that too far down the road to be concerned about?

Graywings, we plan to be in this house for a very long time, our children are 21 and 17 and so we'll be empty nester's in the not too distant future. I don't hate our house, and I feel ashamed really about complaining about a house that is located in such a lovely spot, but it just isn't my taste. The other houses on our street, except for the other brick one which has more character than ours, are all newer homes and they have so much more character. Further down the way on the road that leads in to our lane are plenty of houses just like ours, also built by our neighbor although built in the late 1960's and the early 1970's. I think our builder, who built this as a spec home, had these plans and knew how to build this kind of house so that's what he did. I think what I dislike the most is that our home is so nondescript. We have lived in a 1950's cape and a 1980's center hall colonial, and I just felt like both of those homes had some uniqueness to them that this house lacks. Hard to believe since one of those was a 1980's colonial!! I like to call our current house a "good 'ole Southern Maryland brick rambler." When you say that to people who are from around here they instantly know just what you mean. It means a low pitch roof, brick everywhere, a tiny front porch, or sometimes no porch at all, black or white shutters, and nothing that makes you go "ahhh" when you pull up to it. For every blue crab in the Chesapeake Bay there are just as many brick ramblers! I'm really not trying to keep up with the Jones' most of my neighbors have incomes that far exceed my husband's and mine, and I'm good with that, they are all very nice and wonderful neighbors. I just have in my tiny head a cottage by the sea, one with roses trailing up and over the porch, quirky rooflines, and a feeling that it was added on to over the years. New and pristine don't appeal to me, slightly off kilter and quirky does though, which is probably an apt description of myself. I've just spent so many years looking at magazines (I know I know I've fallen in to the trap) and I'm actually a freelance magazine writer of homes no less, filled with lovely quirkly little cottages and now I jealously want one. I guess I should be happy with my "unassuming" rambler and I know it's a practical and sound house, everyone who has worked on it has said so, but I can't seem to let the dream slip away! :-)

Kat :)

That said, if it were my house, I'd definitely paint the exterior brick in a light, creamy off-white color, nothing too bright, but surely something light, with dark, (black), shutters for accent. I'd beef up the porch posts, too, and add a railing, if possible. If you can change the garage doors to something with an arch, that would help, too. Window boxes for the side and end windows facing the street (all those that aren't under the porch overhang) would surely soften up the facade. Make sure there's some trailing ivy, and petunia's in those window boxes, too! If I can find the type of window boxes I'm dreaming of, I'll post those as soon as I can find them. Love your view, and with all the right help, I'm sure you'll convert your home's exterior to get the effect you want with only minimal expense.

I'm not -- But we're also doing an addition, and I realized I had fallen 'into a box' in my design attempts, and that I really needed some creative ideas that would 'sizzle'. I was talking to a friend who IS an architect (not residential), and the Craigslist 'gig' was her idea. I'd talked to a few architects a few years ago, and they weren't really interested in working for cheap because times were good -- but times have definitely changed Lesmis!

The Craigslist ad I placed was for 5-10 hours work designing the front and rear elevations and rough floorplans for a two-story addition at $50-$75 per hour for a licensed and experienced architect, $35/hour for a student. I got six responses within 24 hours, met with three teams, and hired two. For $600, we got a fabulous new direction that was much more appropriate to the home's 'bones', is probably $75,000 less expensive to build than my initial plan, and is MUCH more attractive.

It would cost you $0 to place an ad and see if you get any interest. And sprucing up your exterior in a cost-efficient way sounds like a much smaller project than mine. Could be the best $250 you could spend...

By the way - I LOVE your kitchen! And what you've done on the inside clearly shows that you can spot and appreciate good design.

Sweeby that's a great idea for finding an architect, and your price was certainly very reasonable! We did contact architects a year and a half ago so it looks like things really have changed. I wish that the builders prices were heading in the same direction, but here in MD they seem to be holding fairly steady. I don't want people to have to do work for free, but they are still asking what they were during the boom time. I know the cost of materials hasn't come down as quickly as some other things so maybe that's the difference. I designed the interior spaces and was the general contractor for all of those, but the exterior is more of a challenge. Trying to come up with something that works both inside and out, without spending huge amounts of money is always a challenge!

Thanks for the compliments and I'll keep you posted as to what we decide. I'm going to try and figure out how to photoshop a new shutter color and beefier porch columns, then I'll decide if I need to make a trip to the paint store to start looking for brick paint!

Kat :)

I would go ahead & paint the brick, get new shutters & wrap your existing posts to make them look beefier (where's the beef? - remember those commercials.....) I always suggest going with natural materials - especially when you are on a lake - cedar or cypress would be gorgeous as shutters & to use to wrap your columns - you could even use beadboard stained on the ceiling of your porch to tie into the stained woodwork. These are just some relatively inexpensive ideas until you can do your big plans.......maybe even get a faux finisher or new garage doors that can be stained to look like the other wood elements. Other items like chunky iron door handles , new door in the same wood stain - things that can be used in your big remodel but also currently.

Smiles:)

Thanks again!

Kat :)

The pergola Suero added is just what I was talking about above only I was thinking about half as deep with latice up the sides too, what Suero did is really pretty. Now if she could add cedar shingle siding in the gables (I'd change the brick back to it's natural state) and add a balustrade to the front porch you'd have my idea for your home. Wish I had a better program and I'd show you what I mean.

Here's my inspiration (and where I got the pergola)

Painting a house is a huge amount of back breaking and often scary (on ladders) and dangerous work, and it's not cheap even to do it yourself. I have done it, have fallen off ladders, etc. It's really a nightmare, and I'm a person who enjoys paining. Hiring it done costs a fortune. The joy of brick is it never needs to be painted.

I would try really hard to jazz it up doing all I could without painting the brick. I'm thinking you could change out the garage doors for something cuter, and paint your shutters, build a pergola, put up a trellis with roses on it, or any number of things that wouldn't be toooo expensive. How about putting in a pretty rose bed down the right side of the driveway?

I would take a very conservative approach. You could always paint the brick later, as a last resort.

If you have money to paint, perhaps use it to improve the landscaping somehow (even tho' it looks great)--adding planters, more colorful flowers. Maybe even change the color of the trim. But it would be a shame to paint. Just my 2 cents.

I'd spend the money on functioning shutters that are pretty and not painted sock-white. And some professional landscaping.

You turned that Barbie kitchen into something absolutely gorgeous. I admire that so much since I am no DIY.

Metromom looked like she purchased a new house, really good looking Metromom.

Jane

Note: I really vote for cream w/green shutters.

You need your own TV show.

Suero and Justgotabme, I really am liking the idea of the pergola it's something I hadn't really considered before. Thanks Suero for trying the cedar shakes on the gable ends, I'm sure it didn't do much since it just accentuates the low slung roofline and that's something we'd like to down play.

Oceanna I completely understand what you are saying about painting. We do have a really good painter who has done work for us for years and is very reasonable so I could ask him what he would charge.

Scoobyruby I hadn't thought about natural wood like cedar, I may have to think about that one, if we don't choose to paint the brick it could be really complimentary to the tones of the brick, but less cottage like I would guess.

Socks and Megsy it's good to know that we don't *have* to paint the brick since it appears that people on here don't hate it, which is great. I do think better landscaping and shutters would go a long way in making things look better. I had to laugh at the white shutter/white sock analogy, we think they look like white socks too! :-)

Kitchenkelly, I have long admired your kitchen and your photos of your backyard so your compliment really made me smile! One of the best parts of my job as a writer is that I've been privileged to write about some amazing homes, both large and small so I've been filing away ideas for a long time now. My husband loves my job and hates it all at the same time. I do a lot of designer and renovation homes so I come home and say things like "hey we can take that wall down!" When he gives me the "no we can't" look, I simply say, sure we can I've seen it done! I'm amazed each time I do a renovation story, I've found over the years that most of the time it's the homeowners with the vision. Few, if any, of the homes I've covered used high powered design or architectural firms to create their dream homes, most of them, like me, have just had a picture in their heads that they are lucky enough to make into a reality! I'm not knocking either designers or architects, if my MIL hadn't had either she would still be trying to make decisions and with their help she and my FIL have a lovely home! And like it has been said before, good architectural plans can often save you money and give you a more sound structure in the end.

My husband has been playing around all day with Photoshop Elements to try and color the house, we just need to figure out how to import BM or SW paint colors, so far all he's been able to apply are crayola primary colors lol!

Kat :)

I would leave the brick alone. What I wonder if you could do is:

Add headers on the window to visually create some break between the top of the windows and the roofline;

Box the posts on the porch (kind of like the lightpost) to give them a cleaner, less 60's look;

Paint the downspouts the color of the brick to make them disappear;

Paint the shutters a rusty red for some spark.

However, if you are determined to paint, I could see the house in a greyed cream color (to work with the roof), with sage shutters and a rich navy blue door.

Thanks Enailes, another Marylander! I love AA County and go there to shop. I used to love to buy clothing for my children over in West Annapolis at Whippersnapper, they had such great stuff! I think Giant Peach is there now, and my kids are grown now so no more cute outfits to buy until grandchildren!! There is a cupola place in Annapolis that is supposed to have lovely cupolas and at a good price.

Kat :)

for out back (gorgeous view!) how about an 'upstairs' deck? might need to put a pulley to haul up food and drinks tho!

the pink kitchen would have scared me away - far away!