Limewashing Exterior Brick

This morning I tackled my awful exterior brick! Before you judge that I covered up something naturally beautiful, I'll just say I added to its beauty. No this isn't a paint/ water mixture. There is no amount of money someone could pay me to paint exterior masonry. I am all about low maintenance and paint is just the opposite!

So, before I jumped into this, I did MONTHS of research, hundreds of google searches and many visits to the hardware store. There isn't much out there when it comes to finding Limewashing recipes. Some were super complicated, more so than I knew it had to be. So I finally stumbled upon a post and stuck with the recipe, but tweeked it just a bit to get the consistency I wanted.

Oh and the best part... this only took 3 hours to complete all by myself!

Here's what it took to do the front exterior of my home. Enjoy!

20 cups of hydrated lime

2 cups of table salt

I used a 10:1 ratio of lime and salt. Then I added equal parts water, so about 20 cups of water. I mixed two batches so I wasn't carrying around a super heavy bucket. I used a paint stirrer to mix the mixture in a 5 gallon bucket. I had the brilliant idea of using a natural bristle broom for application of large areas and it couldn't have been more genius ( if I do say so myself)! The key here is natural bristle. A plastic or synthetic bristle isn't going to hold onto the mixture long enough for you to apply it. I used a smaller paint brush for nooks and crannies.

Here are a few before and afters!

You can see how dingy the brick is in this close up.

Here is a during photo

You can see it's in the curing stage because the bricks are becoming more prominent and varying again verses uniform and white like they were immediately after application.

Next, I tackle that chimney back there :)