Brick: To Paint? Or Not To Paint?

January 2013

After I finished staining the mantel I spent the week applying the poly protective coats.  It took three coats that I applied with a foam brush.  By Thursday, I knew I could no longer ignore the lower portion of our fireplace.  This was my dilemma: I love brick, heck I am from Virginia.  Our clay soil means we are the biggest producers and users of brick in the US (I just made this fact up, but it could be true).    Our brick had problems- big problems. One, it was not the nicest brick, just kinda of a boring 'I am brown' brick, not that I was going to hold it against it.  Worst, the mortar was pink, yes, pink.  Urgh I hated that mortar.  On top of all of that: the brick was covered with 80 years of soot and general dirty house funk.  Just to remind you what the brick was looking like:      

I had some choices.  I could clean the brick. There were several methods I found online that were home made and involved a lot of elbow grease.  There were also several expensive solutions I could purchase where I slathered some goopy gel on the brick wait a day and then according to the pictures have an amazing before and after moment.  The problem was none of these options would help my pink mortar.  This meant I would have to pay someone to come and repoint my fireplace with more attractive mortar- namely any other sensible color such as gray or tan. Read between the lines: very expensive for little change.

The other option was to paint the brick and mortar and be done with the darn thing.  Gulp.  This was tough, there was no going back, once painted brick would be painted forever. There is no stripper for brick. I liked our rustic living room and painting brick felt modern and cold to me.  The problem was I didn't really want to spend any more money of this fireplace. I looked online and searched painted brick fireplaces. Honestly they did make a huge difference to rooms. Rooms that felt old and tired looked fresh and bright.

On a Saturday, I decided to do a quick clean to brick to see if it made a difference. I cleaned the brick and cleaned and it looked exactly the same: sooty sad brown.  I made the decision- we were painting. 

The next step was what to paint the brick?  We could go with the same brown as the chimney breast or the standard bone white of all of our trim and ceilings.  Josh and I decided since our new surround was dark brown we should paint the brick Bone White to stand out.   I bought masonry primer and with way more confidence then I felt I started painting the bricks. 

It was pretty quick work, one coat of primer on Saturday night, then two coats of bone white acrinamel the next day. Getting in the cracks and mortar lines took a long time.  Luckily, small detailed oriented projects are my jam. The best part was since it was January and I had my Downton Abbey to replay over and over.  I had to make sure I had memorized every scathing Maggie Smith reproach.

By the end of the weekend the fireplace looked like this:

Regret it- no, Love it- maybe not totally?

Battening Down the Porch

October 2012

You have probably seen most of this post in the earlier photos but here is some more back story.  Once we had finished the beds and laying out our paths we still need to install them.  The concrete pieces were all different heights and so we needed to use mortar to set them level and flush to one another. 

This is a backbreaking process which we did in the rain.  Which is most likely why we did not photograph any of it.  First we had to dig out some areas as well as raise some other areas to get the stones to line up.  If we had actually used pavers this would not have been a problem.  With nice normal stones we could have laid a nice level bed of sand and simply tapped them into level.  But that would be easy and where is the fun in that.  Instead, our reused concrete bits required a fair bit of wrestling.  To say we got them all level would be a complete lie, this no ADA accessible pathway.  But for all intensive purposes it is perfect, it's a pathway of stones that you can walk on. 

Once the pieces were level we used mortar to set them.  This required roughly 12 bags bought at Lowes and simply mixed with water.  We chose to mix one to two bags at a time in our wheelbarrow with shovels and trowels. It was a bit of an inexact science, some mixes being more of a slurry and some being closer to sludge but in the end it didn't make a big difference.  If you are thinking of doing something similar I suggest more of the sludge consistency.  This helped us level some of the stones.  We spent the entire morning on our hands and knees shoveling and eventually grabbing handfuls of the mortar and placing it under each individual stone.

Once we had set all the stones we reused some existing pea gravel we had on site to fill in the gaps and create a level surface between the stones. We waited about 24 hours before fully walking on the surface and sweeping the excess pea gravel off.  When we were done I have to say it looked pretty darn good.  When you consider the concrete was free and the bags of mortar are about 6-8 dollars it was pretty cheap. We used some existing pea gravel, but if we had to buy it I would say it was about a yard which is about $80 plus delivery.

It was starting to get cold and rainy in Portland and we had run out of good working days to keep going.  I took advantage of some falls sales and grabbed some hydrangeas at 30% off.  I planted three white lamb hydrangeas along the beds and purchased a large Limelight for the corner under the kitchen window.  Honestly, I cannot wait to see them bloom, because buying twiggy dormant plants took some imaging. A few plants that were not successful in other parts of the yard also found their way over to the corner to provide a little bit of evergreen color. 

The last step before we could call it good for the year was to install some doors on either side of the porch.  The doors to the driveway were a definite need as this was the last step to enclosing the backyard and allowing Gus to use his dog door again.  Our friend Gordon, a la dishwasher, staircase beadboard fame, made us some doors and we put them in late October. They look a bit silly since they have their screening and nothing else does.  But it made the project feel more finished! As the rains kept coming we battened down the hatches on the back porch with promises of more work next spring.