My husband and I are serial DIYers. We bought, gutted, and renovated a true fixer-upper in 2017 (you can read about our journey here) and we have spent the last two years jumping from project to project to make our house a home. Almost every time we finish a big project, we say that we are going to hire someone to do the next one. BUTTTTTT every time we get a quote and then do a little research, we decide we can do it and jump right in! I often joke that DIY is like birthing babies. Right after giving birth/finishing a DIY, I always say “never again.” Then within a few weeks, it doesn’t seem that bad, and I suddenly realize just how much I love it!
Our latest project
I have always dreamed of having a beautiful white house. I knew from the first day we saw our house, that one day the ugly pink bricks would be painted a gorgeous and airy shade of white. After getting a quote for a professional painter to do the job, we realized that if we didn’t do it ourselves we might be waiting a while for that gorgeous white brick.
So as always, we decided to do it ourselves.
Over the past two years, we have done tons of research on painting bricks. We have learned a ton of information about why painting isn’t the best idea and some alternatives to get a beautiful look without actually painting the brick. We learned about limewash from Instagram and decided to see what it was all about. Through our research, we were led to the Romabio brand and fell in love with their product and look. Once we decided that limewash was the way to go, we watched tons of videos and found accounts that had experience with it on Instagram so that we knew what to expect.
We figured out that there are two ways to apply it using their large masonry brush or using a sprayer to apply the limewash to the brick. Even though we have a rather large house with A LOT of exterior brick, we went with the Romabio masonry brush to apply it to our house. This is not a “how-to” post so I am not going to go into a lot of details about how to apply and the entire process, but I can tell you that it isn’t too hard. Once you figure out your groove, it is pretty easy to apply.
Now don’t get me wrong, even though the application itself isn’t hard, it is exhausting and time-consuming. It took us many, many days to complete the project. Because we wanted a more painted look and not an antiqued look we ended up applying two coats of the limewash.
You can do it, too
I was shocked when I posted that we were doing our exterior brick by ourselves, how many people responded with how shocked they were or how they could never do something like that. It got me thinking. I mean honestly, there is no difference between me and you. I am a teacher, I have no formal experience with anything we have fixed up in our house. My husband is an electrician, so he does have some experience but not very much.
So how do we do it??
We YouTube A LOT, read tons of blogs, research products and how well they are made, etc. But truthfully it’s a whole lotta trial and error for us. We learn as we go and try to improve as much as we can. The first coat of limewash was a bust for us. We mixed in too much water and when we put it on our brick it looked terrible. I cried and freaked out a little, but then we let all that go and tried again and figured out the mix we needed to get our desired look.
There are some things that we don’t even try on our own because we don’t feel knowledgable enough for like major plumbing projects, but most of the time we jump right in and figure it out! If my husband wasn’t an electrician himself, I wouldn’t even consider trying electrical on our own either because in my opinion that isn’t something to figure out as you go unless getting shocked sounds fun to you! LOL!! But all those little projects that need to be done around your house are the perfect way to jump into the fixer-upper and DIY world.
