{Color Therapy} She’s a Brick House

Okay, so I know that I promised to post pictures of our remaining new windows today, but I need to wait until tonight to take photos.  I didn’t take any last night and I didn’t like how they turned out in the morning light, so I’ll post it tomorrow.  Plus I can’t stop thinking about what I’m going to post about today instead!!  In my blogroll you’ll see a link to Urban Grace Interiors.  It is a blog by a Florida Interior Designer named Ericka, who is also a new mommy, and she has the most beautiful taste I have ever seen {it reminds me of the designer I did my internship with, actually}.  Plus she can write a super short post about Purex Sheets for laundry and receive 144 comments.  Anyway, if you haven’t headed over there before, you have to take a look.  But that is not what this post is about.  See, Ericka has an identical twin sister named Darby who also has a blog {Fly Through Our Window} that I recently discovered.  She blogs about her kids, their family, crafts, recipes, God, life, their remodel, etc.  She lives in Alabama.  After reading through the first couple pages of the blog, I came across her post on Exterior House Details.  Their house was so ugly when they bought it two years ago.  Scary ugly (I’ve seen a couple of Ericka’s posts about Darby’s house on Ericka’s blog – am I confusing you yet? – and the house was crazy, crazy ugly.  But all homes have potential, don’t you think?).  Okay, I’ll just show you what I mean.

I really love the color orange, but this freaks me out.  But amazingly, she turned the bathroom above, into this:

So that is just a glimpse into her talents.  And remember, Darby is the non-interior designer twin!  Anyway, back to what this post is really supposed to be about: her Exterior House Details and how much I am drooling over her paint job.  Her house (like mine) is brick.  Multi-colored brick.  With a lot of wrought iron.  We’ve talked about painting our brick, but part of the beauty of brick is that it never, ever, ever has to be painted.  So we’re a little torn.  I could talk about the pros and cons of painting my house, but that is for another day!  Well after seeing Darby’s before and after, I’m very, very tempted.  I love her colors.  Here it is before said paint job.

And here it is today.  Don’t you love it?

I think my favorite part is the doors.  Good news for us, she was kind enough to note what the colors are!  The body is called Clarksville Gray, the trim is called Texas Leather, and the doors are a custom mix {all colors are by Benjamin Moore}.  For the doors, she wanted a darker and richer version of the Texas Leather trim, so she asked for double the formula of Texas Leather, plus some black.  Pretty smart, right?  I really love black/gray/almost black exteriors, and this house really makes me swoon.  And I love the contrast of the gray against the green in the trees.  Plus her roof color (it looks like dark gray shingles) is my favorite as well – when we re-shingle our roof we’ve already decided on dark gray or black.

What do you have to do to paint a brick house?  First you have to power wash the brick.  When you start to consider finishes, you have to know that masonry ‘breathes’ so you need a special masonry sealer (she used a product called Loxon by Sherwin Williams, which primes and seals brick).  Any large cracks or gaps should be caulked after this step so that no moisture gets in under the paint.  Then you can simply paint the house with regular old latex or oil based exterior paint.  There are other coatings out there that you can use, but this way sounds the most simple to me.

Another option, which we’ve considered, is whitewashing the brick instead.  This is an inexpensive brick coating that can easily be applied, can last 20 to 30 years, but doesn’t start the vicious cycle of maintenance that you start if you paint the brick.  It gives your house a faded look, but it can be a completely different look than naked brick.  Think of an ‘English cottage’ look.  Or how E.T. looks when he’s really sick in the movie.    There seem to be a few different ways to create a whitewash solution, but you basically start out by mixing ivory hydrated lime and table salt then add water.  You can paint it on as thin or as thick as you want, leaving as much or as little exposed to give it the look you’re going for.  (Info via Ask the Builder.)  Here are some examples of what a whitewashed house might look like.

{Image via flickr, linked}

{image via flickr, linked}

You can whitewash interior bricks, too.  Oh yeah.

{image via Apartment Therapy, linked}

As you can probably tell, I really love Darby’s exterior color scheme.  And I think it would work with our house whether it was painted, unpainted, or even whitewashed.  If you look really closely at our pink brick, it has flecks of taupey gray and dark gray/black material in it, so that is what I’ve been studying to pick paint colors for our trim, doors and accents.  I just haven’t made up my mind yet.  But I’m liking this a lot.

I bet Glenn never thought that we’d live in a pink house!  Are any of you out there brick dwellers?  Have you painted? Or even whitewashed??? Let me know!!

Great inspiration here.  I even love her garage. What do you think of her exterior?  Or her orange bathroom!  I hope you enjoyed this little bit of color therapy this Thursday!!  I know I did…and I just had to save it here.  xo, L.

{images via Darby at Fly Through Our Window, linked to sources}