Brick Wall Ideas
Mr. Phillip Gawel has an exposed brick wall that he would like to coordinate with his knotty pine walls by using stucco.
The brick wall was previously on the exterior of the house and will need to be cleaned. A professional would do this with a muriatic acid wash. I do not recommend that you do this yourself. The acid is a bit dangerous to use, there is a lot of wire brushing involved, it takes lots of water to flush the acid away and the mess could damage the rest of the room.
Sandblasting is another method of cleaning but it is dangerous if you have no experience with it and may also damage other areas of the room. You could have professionals clean the wall and then apply the stucco yourself. Once the brick and mortar have been properly prepared the stucco should stick just fine without any metal lathe.
That would be the usual advice but here we give Alternatives.
First, most people would give an eyetooth to have a brick wall inside their home. It is a dramatic feature. You could leave the wall “unspoiled” and build another wall right in front of it. BHM issue #106, page 29 has an article that can help you with that. The new wall could be finished in knotty pine to match the existing walls and preserve the brick wall for the future.
You could build knotty pine shelves and cabinets against the wall. Or a knotty pine wainscot panel with a chair rail. That would sublimate the brick and coordinate it better with the other walls.
Simply painting the wall with two or three coats of latex paint in your favorite color or color scheme would make a big change. Clean the wall with a broom and brush and go to it.
You can get a “faux stucco” finish on your brick wall by using ordinary joint compound. It comes in five gallon buckets, is applied with a six inch putty knife and smoothed out as slick as you want it to be with a trowel and it sticks to most surfaces very well. Joint compound can be textured with a loop roller, rags, bare hands or any number of items if you are interested in that. Start by cleaning the wall with a broom and brush to remove loose particles. Apply multiple layers of joint compound, allowing several days drying time between applications. Finish with a coat of latex primer.
That brick wall is a good backing for a woodstove. It could also be a good location for a fireplace sometime in the future.
I hope this helps. Good luck with your decision.
July 6th, 2007 at 9:18 am
David,
An alternative to acid washing and sandblasting — both horrendously messy undertakings indoors — is to fasten wire lath to the brick and stucco or plaster over that. The lath, properly fastened into the mortar joints with special screws (and sometimes washers) will provide a secure base for the stucco/plaster.
If the homeowner thinks they may someday want to remove the new finish to expose the brick, a layer of paper or house wrap applied before the lath will prevent the stucco/plaster from contacting and sticking to the brick.
By the way, my father was a plasterer and mason who learned his trade back in the days when wood lath and horsehair plaster were state of the art. He often said there was a special place in hell reserved for people who paint brick or stone.
Oliver
July 6th, 2007 at 10:03 am
Oliver,
Thanks for the comment. I agree about not desecrating brick or stone with paint or other stuff, but these young people today…. What can you do?
I like the metal lathe method you described. I have done some concrete block stucco but haven’t ever used lathe. If it is okay I want to add this tip to my next blog credited to you.
About 28 years ago I was working on an estate under renovation. They hired a fellow from England to come do the plaster (no horsehair, only had one horse in the neighborhood) over the original wood lath. He kept to himself and chain smoked some horrendous smelling cigarettes he rolled himself. Hope that wasn’ t your Dad.
David