Sunday, February 21, 2010

Painting a inside wall to look like bricks?

Ok so I want to paint the inside of my living room to look like it is bricks. Does anyone know how to do that and do i need any special tools. Just wondering. Thank you.Painting a inside wall to look like bricks?
You can buy stencils that look like bricks, but it is easy to make them, too. Just take a large piece of mylar or plastic. (I actually found the very inexpensive thin, plastic cutting boards from the discounters hold up very well with the continuous use they will get.) Use a utility or craft knife and cut out a brick shape to the size you want. (I found you can get 2 on the cutting board.) Make the outline of it a little uneven like a worn brick so that the edges aren't completely straight. I prefer to use acrylic glazes in 3 colors for the bricks and 2 colors for the ';grout'; lines. For mine, I used some orange based red, creamy white and smokey gray to give the appearance of used brick, but you can use any combo you like. I used the same smokey gray and a lighter gray for the grout. By using glazes, you give yourself more open time to manipulate the paint colors before it dries. To make glaze yourself, mix 1/3 acyrlic paint, 1/3 water and 1/3 Floetrol (found in the paint aisle at the home improvement center). You can buy already made glazes but they are more expensive and you won't have the color choice that you can make. I mix mine in recycled butter or dairy tubs because they have lids which means you can store them overnight if you don't finish in one day. Once I have my glazes mixed, I pour out the 3 brick colors on one plate. I dampen a regular sponge (they work better on brick look than the sea sponges) and practice on a piece of matte or poster board with the stencil blue taped on. That way, you can see how the colors work together, how much color saturation you want and how heavy a hand to use to accomplish it. Once you have what you want, blue tape the brick to the wall and block in the color. I like having the 2 bricks on one stencil because the grout lines stay pretty even. Do all of the bricks first and let it dry. Add in any other color or make corrections when it is dry because the colors will change with the direction of the light source through the day. Then mix up the grout glaze, pour the colors on another plate, get a brush and freehand in the grout color.Painting a inside wall to look like bricks?
If I had to do it for a customer, I think I would try to get them to use wall paper. It is going to be real hard to make the brick look real if they are only one colour of red. Most bricks are not all the same colour. The first thing I would do is make sure the call is painted the colour of the ';mortar,'; like gray. Then I would get a lot of 3/4'; masking tap and put tape everywhere where you want a mortar seam. When you are done the wall will have a grid of tape. Next I would get a red paint and spray it on with an airless paint sprayer; rent on if you don't have on from United Rentals. After the red paint is on I would take a couple quarts of different reds and stand back and with a whisk broom splatter the wall to give the brick a different colour. Streaks and blotches, anything to brake up the colour. May use a black paint, but stand way back so the droplets are very small. The black will give the brick depth.





You are going to have to be an artist! Don't thin the paint, for it will leach in on the edges of the tape. As soon as you are done, pull the tape off.





Use flat wall paint. You might even want to speckle the gray mortar paint with a darker gray to give it a rough look.





Good luck and Have Fun.
You could do a stencil, like this:


http://www.designerstencils.com/Merchant鈥?/a>


http://www.designerstencils.com/Merchant鈥?/a>








Here's step-by-step instructions how HGTV's ';Room by Room'; did the look of crumbling stones:


http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/dc_faux_trompe_鈥?/a>
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