Quote from glen on October 4, 2023, 7:09 pm

For several years, I've been planning to brighten the off-white brick on my home, to brilliant white.  By "off-white", I mean the current brick finish is a bizarre color that looks like puked up fried eggs sprinkled with powdered sugar.  Ugh - in what era was that a "Designer Pick"?

So I've read that painting brick (eg. latex, oil-base) kills the brick, because it can't breathe and begins to weaken.  Whereas limewash is a mineral bond that is porous, and breathes.  It doesn't peel off like paint - it only wears off over decades, and the basecoat can be re-limewashed when the time comes.  Almost sounds too good to be true.

If that wasn't enough, the ingredients to make limewash run about $30 per coat, for a small house.  I painted the inside wall of my sunroom as a trial, and my whole family loves it.  It's almost good enough (color hiding) to just do one coat, but I'm going to apply a 2nd for absolute pure white.  It feels very durable, and doesn't wash off once dry, but is super-easy to clean up when wet.

I make and apply it one bowl at a time with this recipe:

• 5c of hydrated lime (I got mine at Menards, 50lb bag)
• 1c of table salt (I got mine at Gordon Food Services, 10lb bag)
• 3c of water

Mix dry ingredients, then mix in water.  This gives a pancake-batter consistency that's perfect for painting on with a normal big paintbrush.  A full article with this recipe and other details is here.

I'll be limewashing my whole outside brick home in the coming weeks, now that I've seen how wonderful it is.