We Whitewashed Our Brick House!

It’s been a long journey with our home and I am REALLY excited to say that we have officially whitewashed our brick!! We are in the process of completely transforming our exterior – that includes concrete, landscaping, and color scheme.

We bought a fixer upper in 2018 and have been working on the interior since closing day. Seriously, we got the keys and immediately began tearing up carpet! I have had high hopes for the exterior since day one, but we can only do so much every day haha! Since we’ve (for the most part) wrapped up the interior, we are beyond excited to take on and transform our curb appeal.

I knew I wanted to change the color of the brick, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to paint it the same color as the siding, or paint it white. After extensive research, I learned that painting brick is actually not a great idea. Apparently, paint can “suffocate” the moisture in & behind the brick. Over time, that moisture will cause the paint to bubble up and peel off.

Now that’s just what the internet told me, but I really didn’t want to risk it. I learned that lime washing brick was a much better option because it allows the brick to breath, yet is durable. I’m no expert by any means, so if you have questions, I’d do the research for yourself and see what you find. That’s just what I found out online!

One thing I LOVE about lime wash is that it is so much easier to clean up than paint. I’ve cleaned out so many paint brushes and rollers in the past two years that I’m just over it haha! But the lime wash washed out of the brush really easily.

You don’t need much to complete this project. You’ll need:

• Romabio Limewash (I used Avario)
• Masonry Brush
• 5 Gallon Bucket
• Drill – we have this one
• Paint Stirrer Extension
• Tarps (so it doesn’t get everywhere)

Bits of Advice:

The drill + paint stirrer extension make mixing it sooo much easier. The limewash is a very thick paste, and I can’t imagine mixing it by hand. You could probably do it, but after two years of this we’ve learned to work smarter, not harder. 😉

I used a 1:1 ratio of limewash to water because that’s what the standard seemed to be. I wanted our brick to look white – not see through white. Like REALLY white. And the 1:1 ratio worked great for me. I just measured the water in the same bucket that the limewash came in to get the correct measurements.

It’s such a runny liquid that it splatters very easily. I got kinda a lot on our concrete. I left it for one day, and the hose nozzle couldn’t get it up. Then we left for vacation, and we still haven’t gotten it up. So… We are going to buy a power washer, but I don’t actually know if that will remove it from our concrete. In hindsight, I would have made more of an effort to wash it off the concrete immediately.

It took us a full day to complete this project, which isn’t bad at all!

The limewash & supplies cost me less than $150 – pretty cheap if you’re asking me!

We have a laundry list of things to do in order to make our exterior “complete” (is a home ever complete?!) We still need to:

• change the roof to a dark grey
• finish painting
• replace some trim work
• hang our new house numbers & lantern
• LANDSCAPE.. OMG. So much landscaping to be done.
• Get a new front door.

BUT we are getting there and this step really made a huge difference.

UPDATE! SEE THE FINAL BEFORE AND AFTER PICTURES HERE! 🙂

Thanks for reading!