How we limewashed our brick home
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This is a photo of our home when we moved into it. Not much of a looker. I knew from the moment we bought our home that I wanted to paint the exterior brick white. There are a lot of red brick homes that I love, but this particular style of brick was not my taste.
For safety reasons we needed to add a handrail to the stairs and add new posts to the porch. This was a priority over painting the home when we first moved in.
Adding the new posts and railings did wonders for the exterior! And my amazing husband did it all in a weekend! 💪
My husband and I had many long debates about what to do with the exterior of our home. I was set on painting it, he was not convinced. We tried to pressure wash a section of the brick to see how it cleaned up, but it did not do much good.
After all seemed like I was stuck with the brick as it was, the Instagram gods came through.
One afternoon while scrolling on Instagram, my husband came across this company called Romabio. After a lot of research, we finally both agreed this was the direction we wanted to go to paint our brick home.
They sell Romabio at Home Depot, we do not have one close to where we live, so we ordered it online on the Home Depot website. Our home is a one story ranch, about 2100 square feet and we ordered one 4 gallon bucket of Avorio White, and that was enough for our whole house. One 4 gallon bucket retails for $250 at Home Depot and they offer free shipping to your home!
The dilution we used was a 50/50 ratio meaning half Romabio paint, half water. This worked perfectly for the look we were going for.
What we did was purchase a second 4 gallon bucket from our local home improvement store for a few bucks, pour half the paint into the bucket, then fill the buckets with water for the 50/50 dilution. Mix the water and paint using a paddle that attaches to your drill for easy mixing!
Romabio has a masonry brush they recommend, but we found this masonry brush on Amazon that worked great (if you are looking to save a few bucks) for getting the spots that the paint sprayer could not get.
We also opted to use a paint sprayer for majority of the house. It was fast and we painted the whole house in one day! This is the exact paint sprayer that we used:
To start, you need to wet the surface you will be painting first. Then, using the paint sprayer, we did sprayed a section of the house. What I love about Romabio, is it can be removed! You have up to 5 days to remove the paint using a pressure washer if you do not like it, or want to alter the finish in any way. I chose not to distress the paint at all as I liked the look of the application with the paint sprayer.
As I mentioned, it took a day to paint the house. We used the paint sprayer for majority of the house, and used the brush to get around the porch railings. Our windows needed to be replaced so we were not concerned about getting paint on them, but be sure to cover anything you do not want to get paint on.
If you want ideas or inspiration for what kind of looks you can achieve using Romabio paint, check out their Instagram here! So many gorgeous before and afters!
Be sure you choose to do this when the weather looks nice and sunny for a few days to insure the paint does not wash way in any spots!
I loved that we did not have to worry about using Romabio next to the plants because it will not harm any of them!
Remember that before picture…
Look at the difference!
We could not be happier with how it turned out! Before our home blended in with the trees and did not have much curb appeal. After painting it, the home popped and we had a lot of neighbors stopping to compliment our home! I recommend Romabio to everyone looking to paint brick of any kind!
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Hi! I just love this makeover! My husband and I bought a fixer upper 2 yrs ago and we’re just now getting around to the exterior. Our house looks almost exactly the same as yours! So funny how similar ranch homes can be! I too came across Romabio on Instagram and Pinterest (which is how I found your limewash experience!) and I have a few questions. Did you trench around your home to remove any loose dirt/debris/plants before spraying? If so, how deep? I just don’t want to limewash the house and the bottom part near the ground expose itself one day. Also, did you lay plastic over your sidewalks/driveway? Or is it really as easy as they say it is to wash it off with water?
If you could, I would also love pictures/tutorial/important tips on the wood railing as we need to add that too!
Thanks so much! And your home looks amazing!
Thank you so much!! I really appreciate your sweet comment! Got to love these brick ranch style homes! Yes, we did dig around the base of the house to paint all the brick so it wasn’t exposed one day. It was about 6-12 inches deep. The only place we laid plastic down was on the front porch, but that was mainly for the stain we did on the wood railing. The limewash really does wash away easily in the first 24 hours! For the wood railing, we laid plastic down and just stained it by hand using a brush. This was actually harder than the limeash process! (But still only took a few hours!) Good luck on your house and please let me know if I can answer any other questions!!
Jennifer,
I would like to limewash my front porch and steps but saw your note that the limewash came off your steps quite easily. Would you recommend something else or do you still like the look and how it is holding up. We also have alot of traffic.
If you have heavy foot traffic, the limewash will wear off and you will end up with a messy looking front porch (in my opinion!) I ended up painting my steps with just a outdoor white paint that matched my limewash because that is the look I preferred! Hope that helps!
On some limewash tutorials they say the product was to thIck to use a sprayer. You didn’t have any problem with the thickness of the limewash clogging the sprayer?
NO not at all! We did a 50/50 ratio of water to paint and that was a great consistency. The only reason I could see it being too thick is if they did not add enough water?
Can I limewash a patio floor?. Not a lot of foot traffic. Maybe I can apply a sealer on top? What do you think
Is your patio brick? We applied the limewash to our brick stairs on our front porch and it faded quite a bit. We did have heavy foot traffic though so if it is light foot traffic you may have better luck than we did!
Hey! I was curious about your siding. Ours is cream colored plastic siding. I’m wondering what it would look like if we sprayed it as well or if it doesn’t stay well on plastic if it was clash immensely. I really don’t want to whitewash any color but white lol!
I am not sure about spraying it on siding as our siding was white so we just left it as is!
What color did you use?
We used Avorio White Limewash by Romabio!
My home is so similar to yours….same yuck brick too lol. How many coats did it take? Just the one? How often must I repaint? Your home is beautiful!
Thank you so much! It is just one coat, super easy! You should not have to touch up or repaint for a very long time!
Looks great! We are painting our his with this product this month, which sprayer tips did you use for the Graco 5? I have the same sprayer and read that some professionals recommend removing the filter and going to a larger bore size tip, thanks in advance!