Paint A Brick Wall, step by step

Note: Our heads are still spinning from the terrible tragedy in Connecticut on Friday. We are sending plenty of enjoy to everyone up there and holding Clara close. Our friend Roo, who has three small children and only lives a few towns away from Sandy Hook wrote a post about how we can assist, so for anyone looking for ways to make a small difference, here is that link.

Some brick-painting happened in the sunroom…

Which we do not think will surprise/sadden nearly anyone on the interweb since we heard so many war cries of “paint that brick!” after sharing our last sunroom post…

We even got a bunch of more passionate and detailed pleas like: “I am never one for painting brick but that is such a weird shape that is cut off at the top and does not look good from the living room at all… so paint that brick!”

This used to be the view from the couch that I stared at every. single. night. for the last 2+ years, so… I was ready.

So after considering everything from whitewashing it to distressing it (which would make it more of an accent then simply letting it fall back and blend in) it was time to PAINT! THAT! BRICK! Feel free to shout that a la Ty Pennington’s MOVE! THAT! BUS!

As predicted, it looks a lot better from the living room now. Whew.

Oh and this view demonstrates why we did not feel like drywalling over the brick in the sunroom to hide it, since:

• that is a lot of work/dust (plus it would not match up perfectly with the drywalled lip above it anyway)
• there is still painted brick in the adjoined living room anyway
• we in fact enjoy the texture of painted brick, which we had on two walls of our first house’s den

Holy cow, check out the dollhouse in the two pictures above. Not a thing has moved in the nearly-a-week between this paint job and that last picture. But the floor mat near the slider along with Clara’s Uglydoll are nowhere to be seen. Better remind Clara that the dollhouse is still there (and it is a better toy than moving the floor mat around, haha). She’s been fairly into playing in the sunroom now that it is not full of hazards and old furniture anymore, so perhaps that has been taking the focus away from her “furniture rearranging skills” (aka: the dresser-and-bed-switching/throwing/hiding Olympics that her dollhouse provides).

Oh and we got a few questions about why we did not simply clad the whole wall in wood or make some sort of rustic accent on the triangle above the brick, but the major thing that we are trying to downplay about this room are all the crazy angles. See how the ceiling slopes waaaay to the right on that wall?

Well if you turn around it slopes to the left. So yes, it is in short a spaceship of a room with a diagonal peak in the ceiling that slopes from corner to corner. As in it looks like someone glued an angular and modern room onto a flat little brick house. So we want to downplay those zany angles and assist everything flow so it feels like it belongs here with the rest of the house. Which is why a pleasant blanket of gray paint over all the walls and ceilings was the name of the game.

For all of you visual folks, this is what it would look like (per some bad photoshop) if we had accented it somehow – with wood, brick, etc. See how it would emphasize that weird slope? Which would totally fit into a especially modern house with other slopes and lofted rooms (like Gloria and Jay’s house on Modern Family), but we simply did not think it would go with the rest of our non-slanty-or-futuristic house.

So grease paint was the word. And in some insane gift from the home improvement gods, it only took two coats (brick suuuuucks up paint, so we thought it would take four, which is our usual experience with it). We did not use any sort of primer – since we did not back when we painted the brick in our den and that worked out for us – and as usual I wielded the brush (for getting into all of those cracks – yeah, there were about a million).

My name is Sherry and I paint cracks by the dozen. Meanwhile John rolled using a nappy roller, which helps to coat textured surfaces more than a especially smooth one does.

We in fact got nearly the whole thing done during a Clara nap, so you can go ahead and file this under “Christmas miracle.” And my hope for anyone else who is painting brick is that it is as swift and painless as this job was. Even all that crack painting could have been muuuuch worse (painting every crack twice beats painting every crack four times, if you know what I mean).

Here is what they looked like before I got to them with the brush, but after John rolled. They were sneaky little buggers.

And simply for lively, here is what Burger does while we work away in the background (do not mind my inside-out-sleepwear-as-painting-clothes). #hubbahubba

The good news is that the pleasant even coverage that we eventually accomplished made a large difference. Now when you are in the room it feels more cohesive and a lot less chopped up. And we think adding some pleasant art to that wall will further take the focus away from any difference between drywall and painted brick (our first house’s den had two walls of paneling and two walls of brick, but once it was all painted with furniture and art and curtains it was barely noticeable).

Simply to save you some scrolling, here is the full after of that wall again. It is certainly a lot of gray, but we are simply getting began…

And here is what it looked like before.

Why did not we do this sooner? Over two years of staring at a weird U-shaped brick blob in the next room is two years too long.

I cannot wait to hang some art on the brick wall to make that off-center window fit right in. Sing it with me: “white frames, white frames, whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?” Thought you folks would like some Inner Circle on a Monday morning. No? How about some more bad photoshop then? And in fact, I think we might work some wood frames/items into the mix too. Might be lively and eclectic.

But even without any frames, it is a definite improvement simply to have broken out some fresh paint. In short blanketing this room in taupey-gray has done five things:

• it draws the eye out the windows to the fairly trees outside (the windows/view are certainly the stars of this room)
• it downplays all the crazy ceiling angles and the choppy-looking brick-cut-off conundrum by unifying everything
• it allows things like the colorful cushions on the daybed to stand out in a way that they could not when they had to compete with the dark brick
• it makes the floor look a lot less yellowed and old (brings out the gray undertones instead of the yellow ones)
• it makes the white window trim and molding pop like crazy, so the room feels crisp and updated

Of course we still have a long way to go when it comes to the furniture arrangement. We are simply using things we already have in the meantime, but eventually I am sure a lot of things will get moved/upgraded/painted/etc. And we still have to bring in a rug, art, and all that jazz. And do not mind that sad wrinkly sheet on the daybed of those orange slabs of wood along each slider where it meets the floor. Let us simply say that a ton of things are simply waiting to be “attended to.” But the middle makes no sense anyway! Haha. What did you folks do this weekend? Can you tell I am all jittery and weird? We are hosting Christmas dinner for the first time ever (for fifteen people – four of which are under the age of four!) so it should be a whole lotta crazy. As expected, I cannot wait. You know I enjoy the crazy…

Psst- To see this little sunroom makeover from the beginning, click here to read about phase 1 (planning, furniture placement) and here for the details on phase 2 (painting the lofted room and ceiling).

Psssst- Speaking of paint, one of the most freeing things about writing our book was that it allowed us to chose paint colors that do not necessarily have to fit right into our house, so we are over here chatting about stretching our color comfort zone.