Oh My! Shane McGarry wants to cover up even more brick than our last reader.

Shane does not say if the brick is inside or outside. If it is outside then a thorough cleaning is needed to remove dirt, contaminants and efflorescence that emerges on aged brick work. Acid wash or sand blasting will get it prepared so the stucco will adhere. Professionals should do the cleaning for you.

However, Shane, if you have $20,000 dollars available I think you could hire a professional to stucco the house, the driveway and two or three of your cars for that amount.

If you bought the stucco spray machine you might be tempted to become a professional stucco application business owner to recoup some of your investment. It scares me to think of someone out there willing and able to take beautiful old brick walls and cover them in stucco. Not that stucco doesn’t have a charm all it’s own. It just seems like gilding the lily.

Please, take some of the $20,000, go on vacation for a couple of weeks and when you get back you will be so happy to see your beautiful brick house that you will hopefully decide to leave it as it is.

However, if you are bound and determined to do this, my last blog has some more information about what to do with brick walls and our friend Oliver has something to say about metal lath over brick that you should read. Check the comments with this blog.

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.

My name is David Lee. I am here to host discussions and answer questions about your building needs. I will try to help you with solutions to building care and repair problems. I have about forty years of experience building, repairing, maintaining and inspecting all kinds of structures. I don’t know everything but I will help you or point you in the right direction.

I want this to be more than a fix-it blog. Alternative means different, varied, innovative, modified, diverse or another choice. I got into the building trade primarily because I wanted some special amenities not available in existing houses. Some were prohibitively expensive to have done by contractors. Others irritated code enforcers or were insubordinate to neighborhood “protective covenants”.

I left a good paying job in the city, moved to the country, got a not so good paying job and began building my alternative home. Then I sold it, quit my job, built another house, and another. It became a way of life. I have been self-employed, and purposely ’self-unemployed’ when I wanted to be, ever since.

Along the way I have discovered new ways to build, repair and upgrade homes and their systems. I hope to generate discussions with those of you who want to share better, more efficient, less commercial, owner-inspired, owner-controlled home building ideas. You might not make a career of Alternative Building but there are many money making alternative small businesses possible in this field. Or this blog may simply help you make your home more comfortable. If you are reading Backwoods Home Magazine or keeping up with the website you are already participating in an alternative lifestyle. Your home is an important part of that lifestyle. Let’s talk about it.

Now for the first building tip. Bob and Dianna are parging a cinder block wall and want to add color to it. Check the BHM website and find the article about this exact subject by Bill Leonard. He does not mention color additives but you can buy them at a masonry supply store by the pound. Add them to your mortar/sand/water mix while still following Bill’s advice about getting the consistency right. Add a little more than you think you need because the color fades some after the cure. That is one way.

Here is another. I once colored a poured concrete floor by sprinkling the coloring material (actually, it’s chalk) on the uncured concrete and troweling it until I got the look I wanted. This method used much less coloring material than would be needed if adding it to the whole mix, plus it gave a stronger finished color. This method may also work on uncured parged surfaces. Do a small batch to test each method before committing to the whole job. Let me know how it works, either way.

LW Thompson in Dothan, AL has a sinking floor. I suspect the concrete posts or piers have settled, causing your problems. There could be other issues but let’s address this one now. The posts may still be useful. Find a worker with a small butt. Send the worker under there with at least two jacks (hydraulic or mechanical), some blocking pieces (preferably hardwood), a good flashlight and maybe a tetanus shot. Set the jacks under the girder 6′ to 8′ apart on pads large enough to spread the pressure. SLOWLY and evenly, jack the girder up. In fact it is best to spread the jacking time over several days. It did not sag quickly and should not be returned to level too fast. That could cause other damage.

Bring the floor to just a little bit above level. Now fill the spaces between the top of the posts and the girder with blocking and let the girder back down. This fix should last quite awhile, won’t cost much and can be redone if the posts continue to sink.

I am sure the local government will take your money and issue you a permit if you go there. The contractor probably has to get a permit because he is working on a customer’s property. But, as the owner, you have the right to do your own work. If there are other factors involved get back to me.