If you home is brick veneer--in other words, a frame home with brick attached, which has been the standard for 50 years--it's a relatively straightforward job to remove and replace with a different brick or stone. It's just not cheap and usually only makes economic sense on a very high-end home.

Once you apply paint to brick, you've gone from a low maintenance system to one that requires regular retouching and repainting to avoid looking rundown.

Here's the "after" shot of a large but boring 1960s brick home whose veneer brick was replaced by stone and stucco, copper highlighting, a stone porch and high-end landscaping. (Sorry the "before" shot remains stuck in my head.)

This post was edited by worthy on Sun, May 25, 14 at 12:09

Try having the brick cleaned. It's amazing what a good cleaning can do to the appearance.

I am glad to hear your brick cleaned up well. Our home is faced with brick that has been 'melting' away in the 30 years of installation..obviously poor quality. So instead of stucco, we have opted to reface our wood framed home surfaces with tile backer board and the scraps from the kitchen counter-top fabricators with thin-set and sealant. This gives us the same uniform thickness with a natural product and keeps waste from the landfill or increased energy use in down-cycling to ground up DG. The scrap is free material if you have a system to collect and are aware of the weight/safety factors. After 3 months of collection every Saturdary, we saved the fabricator over 2,500.00 in dump charges. Here are some applications to using scrap: placement on concrete block or cement slab substructure for murals, on backerboard with less than 4 ft height limitations (I haven't tested for higher than that in earthquake country). If you want to see more pictures, you can respond on this forum. There are definite guidelines for artistic installations when you have limitations to size and shape of the scrap. We really like the product and it is using a waste stream resource. The only draw back is you have to like a shiny surface for your home, you may reflect on that.

This is the 4 ft wall we replaced, sorry the work place isn't cleared yet.

and the cement bench/retaining wall. Considering i did the work myself, my costs are about 1.5-2.00/square foot of assembly. Hope that helps.

How creative! Though not for everyone.

Thank you, Yes the labor involved was significant, but when you are cash strapped and time rich...it makes for good conversation.