Home / 07/13/2019

Painted Brick and a metal roof

To Paint or not to paint brick

I’ve come to learn that painting brick is a controversial topic. In other words, it’s right up there with “which way should the toilet paper roll?” debate. People have some VERY strong opinions about it. Personally, I’ve always been in love with painted brick because it has a classic feel to me and I know that it can give tired brick a new life. Folks, our brick was SO tired!

When we learned we had to get a new roof, we cringed at the thought of our tired old brick house sitting under a lovely new roof. We knew we’d have to freshen things up. We knew our sweet ranch would get a paint job. Obviously, we’d do it ourselves but we didn’t know we’d do it over the course of 3 of the hottest days of the summer.

We sprung a leak

So…. Our old roof sprung a leak. We knew it had to be replaced but had thought the bad part was isolated to one corner (which we had tarped). We learned the hard way (with a 4 foot chunk of ceiling dropping into my son’s bedroom and scaring me half to death) that our roof was damaged in multiple spots. That last hard rain pushed it over the edge.

To be clear, the ceiling falling was a blessing. I know that sounds crazy but it finally made us pull the trigger. We had to make a roof decision on the spot and there was no more time to debate on design. It was go time.

Jason and Chris from Pioneer Roofing came over and verified measurements. They brought us a sample of the metal roof we wanted. I went from feeling panicked about the ceiling to excited about what was coming. Then we did it, that thing we’d been afraid to do because of money, fear, procrastination and who knows what other reasons. We pulled the trigger. We decided on Thursday evening and our new (metal) roof would be installed on Tuesday morning.

Hurry up and paint

Then… panic set in. We had Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday to paint the house, the WHOLE HOUSE!!! Did I mention I’ve never painted the outside of a house before? That wasn’t intimidating at all! (Sarcasm font needed.)

First stop? Home Depot. We needed some colossal amounts of paint. I spent Friday painting the porch area. When that took all day using a roller, I knew I was in trouble but let me tell you, there was a determination in this DIYer like you’ve never seen. Because I am less than graceful and I didn’t want to get paint on our new roof, we had to get this house painted before the new roof was installed.

Andy joined me on Saturday and despite the near 90 degree days, we painted brick… and painted brick… and then we painted some more brick… We used this specialty paint made for masonry, stucco & brick from Behr. It was perfect for this job. We chose White #52. I need to talk to Behr about renaming it Bright Road White. #52 is just too bland a name for such an awesome color.

All in all, it took nearly 25 gallons of paint to the tune of about $500, the better part of 4 days, countless gallons of water to drink during the day, a few adult beverages to drink at night, 1 container of IcyHot for those tired muscles and a few frozen tee shirts to get us to the painting finish line. (The frozen wet tee shirts we used to cool our necks and let me tell you… Those were the secret ingredient to getting this done and not dying of heat exhaustion.)

Even without the new roof, our little ranch was starting to sparkle. Paint alone gave this home a whole new look. Never underestimate the power of paint. Never.

Over the course of Tuesday and Wednesday the guys from Pioneer tirelessly put on our new roof. As the brown slowly disappeared and the new look came into focus, I was awestruck. Truly. I could not believe this was the same home. Above all, I couldn’t believe this was MY home. While there’s still a lot of work to do…. I’m so happy to reveal her to you for the first time.