Painted Brick Walls

Internal brick walls........urgh..........not my favourite look.

Lovely feature bricks surrounding a fire place, now that is a good look.

But basic construction bricks left exposed, nah, not my thing.

It was one on the cringe factors in my home that I wanted fixed up straight away.

Well in July this year I will have been in my home for 7 years and YEP, you guessed it, I still have brick walls. They are in my lounge, dining and laundry rooms.

It is one job my wonderful tradie family is not willing to tackle themselves.

My thoughts are to have batons installed and then have plaster sheets put up. That way there is a cavity to place cables should I need power or TV points placed there. 

It has been suggested to just paint the walls or render them, but I don't think I want the extra 'texture' in the lounge specifically. 

A 'spanner in the works' in getting this job done is I had an air-con split system installed on the brick wall in the lounge, this was done as a surprise for me the first summer I was in my place. So it will need to be removed when the plastering happens, and as an older home it needs some work in other areas and I would prefer to get all the plastering done in one go. 

and lets not mention the $$$ factor in paying tradies to do the job as opposed to providing lunch for family and doing return favours.

My Laundry room has been my first attempt in covering up the bricks.

I chose to paint in here as the room is small and I don't want to loose the space in plastering the walls. When I completed this job I had a pet rabbit who slept in the laundry. and anyone else who has had a 'house rabbit' knows their fur gets everywhere!!! this included stuck all up the exposed brick, it was like a magnet, and I had to vacuum the walls regularly. 

My thought was if the brick was painted the fur wouldn't stick so much and the room would keep a little cleaner.

So one Saturday I began. I prepared the bricks by scrubbing with a dry brush and vacuuming to clean off any loose material.

I just used ordinary wall paint that I had painted my walls with, no sealer. I started with a foam brush, but that got ripped to shreds pretty quick so I used an old brush.

I started by painting the grout lines, this was a long task and you can see by my photo's, they were taken at night. Thankfully my neighbours were having a party that night, so I had some great music in the background to keep my going.

Once all the lines were filled I just slapped that paint on the bricks using both a brush for the first coat and a roller for the second.

My home is definitely rustic chic (or so I want it to be) so if there were small crevices in the brick not covered I didn't mind. Lots of little rustic bits look great in my mind, as opposed to trying to fill in every gap and missing some that will stand out like a sore thumb.

I loved the look when it was finished, so much cleaner looking and the paint did stop most of the rabbit fur sticking to the brick. Now to get onto some storage in here.

I will be linked up at these fab parties.