You guys!! What I’m about to tell you most of the Home Depot and Lowe’s people don’t even know! I walked in to both paint departments at Lowe’s and Home Depot asking both stores what I could use to whitewash my exterior brick, and they both said they had nothing! Say what!?!?
I was so discouraged, but luckily for you and I, there was a silver lining. I happened to need address numbers for my DIY succulent address plaque I was working on at the time as well, (post coming soon!😄) because if you know me, you know I’m always working on multiple projects at once. Not the best idea, but that’s how my brain works (being all over the place!:). So I roll with it and make the best of it, and this time my bad habit of working on multiple things at once, worked in my favor!
Anyways, I’ll get to what happened. See, I told you my brain likes to be all over the place;) I went to buy address numbers in a completely separate section in Home Depot, and this nice employee asked me if I needed any help. Feeling discouraged with already being at two stores with no answers I decided to tell him what I really needed help with not thinking he would have a clue what I was talking about. I think it was more of a discouraged venting session for me. Ha!
But guess what!? To my surprise ( and LUCK!), painting houses and brick is what he used to do before he worked for the good ol’ Home Depot!(Insert dorky happy dance) He told me exactly what to do to whitewash my brick and how to do it, and I’m so thankful, because it has made a huge difference on our house’s curb appeal! Well, at least I think so anyway.😉
Now that I’ve discovered the top secret method of how to whitewash your brick, I’m ready to share it here with you! So let’s get to it!
Here’s what you’ll need:
- Behr Semi-Transparent Concrete Stain. Once you grab that, you have to walk up to the paint counter and ask them to mix in white with it.
- Old Towels or a Paint Sprayer if it’s a large area. I used towels, but I wish I would have listened to the guy at Home Depot who said I should use a sprayer for my size of job, because let me tell you, it ended up being a JOB! Worth it, though!
- Gloves, and knee pads if you want to be more comfortable for those low areas!
- Painter’s Tape and materials to cover any areas you don’t want to get paint on.
That’s all you need! Now let’s get to this transformation already!
Start by prepping the area you are whitewashing if need be. I started on the back of our mailbox to test out if I liked it so I just laid down a blanket, but on the house I had some taping off to do.
Once your area is all prepped, grab your semi-transparent concrete stain, towels, and your gloves, and get ready to say good-bye to your old brick, because it’s about to be updated!
Wearing your gloves, dip your towel into the can of concrete stain, and start wiping down your brick! I started by getting in the grout areas then used the access stain that dripped down to wipe into the brick. Keep up that method, going row by row. Unless you use a sprayer, then spray away! The first wipe through will quickly soak into the brick, then the second layer will really stick. Just stick to covering the grout and, trust me, you will get plenty of coverage on your brick as well.
I kept that up until every single brick was finished! If you use a sprayer, let me know how that goes because you better believe half way through I wished I would have used one! Especially on our super tall pillars!😳🤪
What I learned about whitewashing while doing this:
- Always check for drips down in areas you’re not working on. This stuff dries super fast so you’ll want to wipe in any drips pretty quickly so that you don’t have drip marks. If you do, don’t worry, it’s not the end of the world. Trust me, I have some and it still looks good!
- Music helps!😉
- Knee pads come in handy if you’re not using a sprayer.
- Make sure your concrete areas are covered well, because this stain really does work on concrete! Yep, also made that mistake too! Ha!
- Don’t wear nice clothes! They will probably be whitewashed too!:)
That’s it! I can’t wait to see your brick transformation! If you do this, I would love to see your transformation! If you have Instagram tag me with your project! My favorite thing is seeing what all you creative people come up with and the changes you make on your houses. You can find me @thedecormama on Instagram. I can’t wait to connect with you!
Oh, and here’s the DIY succulent address plaque I was talking about previously that I’ll be working on a post for as soon as I hit publish on this one!😉
I’ll see you guys back here real soon for that and more, because I’m behind on my writing! I’ve got a lot of projects to tell you guys all about that I’ve already finished! It’s so hard for me to sit down and write, because I just want to keep making things, but don’t worry, I’ll get on it!
Thank you so much for coming!!!
