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General: Exposed brick walls - keep or cover?

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    If you also lurk on Old House Web, forgive me for the double ask....


    We've got a brick, brick and brick house. We've removed layers of bad drywall, crumbling plaster and lathe, and more plaster to expose the brick in our house. Exterior walls, interior walls, it's all brick. We've got 2 chimneys with fireplaces that we're considering leaving (OF COURSE, we're keeping the fireplaces- should we leave the brick exposed?) and an angular "living room" wall that faces a park that we think the brick nicely frames. We're not worried about the insulation as we've been there working for a few months and the brick on the exterior walls is always room temperature to the touch (at worst). Has anyone got exposed brick walls and would you do it again? They are gorgeous, but my husband's office is lots of brick and constantly the base of the walls are brick dusty. Any suggestions of what to seal it with if we go that route?

    A post with pics and more sprinkled throughout the blog:

    http://martineaubungalow.blogspot.com/2007/01/brick-and-beams.html

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    Any water-based brick/masonry sealer will work fine.  The traditional method of sealing exposed brick is shellac (white or orange).  This will produce a shinier surface but will also darken it a shade or two.  Apply with a spray bottle and use a brush for the drips.



    Just make sure to clean the brick with a dilute muratic acid solution and a non-metallic brush.  This will remove loose mortar and lime stains on the brick face. Muratic acid will instantly rust any metal it comes in contact with... even the fumes, which are intense, will do it.  Wear rubber gloves, goggles, a mask and use an exhaust fan.  I also wore an old farmer's rain suit.  Yeah, it's messy but it does a good job.
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    ooooh! i think natural brick looks so cool. i would vote to keep some of it if you can. maybe not ALL of it (since i guess that would mean the entire house)... but in select locations. exposed brick looks really great in kitchens, for instance. or around windows. good luck!
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      CommentAuthorranchredo
    • CommentTimeJan 28th 2007 edited
     
    My sister had some friends that had exposed brick on one side of their loft.  It was awesome.  There bed was up against the brick wall (and they had a bank of ikea shelving that had mirrored doors on the opposite side) and then the living room had one brick wall.  I loved it.
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    Question about the brick walls, I can help.  Don't seal them with anything!  This is one of the biggest problems in Chicago when developers repoint the outside and inside with hard mortar then try to seal the walls. 


    It is important to allow the walls to breathe.  Suggest you fix any deteriorated mortar with the original material which can be easily matched to ensure performance.


    Please, Please,Please do not use muratic acid on brick!  These old brick will draw in that stuff and often it turns green!  old brick are very absorbant - like the dounty paper towel commercials...remember..


    Helpful sites

    check out

    www.usheritage.com

    www.traditionalmasonry.com  Free magazine on-line about bricks and mortar!


    i lov the web!


    Good Luck!

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    Muriatic acid must be used very dilute... typically in a 10% solution.  If it's used full strength it can literally dissolve the lime out of the mortar, often resulting in even more staining.   That's where people go wrong with it.



    I've used muriatic acid on at least a half-dozen large exposed brick walls since the 1970s, including the 100 year-old brick in my current house.  I did nearly 300 linear feet of old brick in a 150 year-old Soho loft building back in 1972 and saw that wall just a few years ago (it's a gallery now).   It looked fine -- it even had what looked to be the original orange shellac we sealed it with.



    I've  never had a problem with muriatic acid turning brick green!  Maybe it reacted with some chemical in the mortar or old sealer?  Dilute muriatic acid is what old school masons often use in their final cleanup  to scrub up mortar stains.



    Nothing seals brick tighter than a couple of coats of elastic, enamel house paint. 



    My understanding of the issue with modem repointing of old brick is (as you said) the mortars.  Old mortars were much softer and contain more sand than modem mortars.  As a result, the modern stuff can literally pulverize old brick during seasonal expansion and contraction, especially a place with the temperature extremes of Chicago.
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    Hi there ... I read your post on how to seal an exposed brick wall, and was hoping you could give me some much needed advice?


    I am going to be starting a project that I would love to expose a brick wall in. I'm nervous about even starting the project, mainly because it is a 100+ year old building and I just don't know what I issues I can expect. I've never exposed brick before and I have no idea where to begin. I'm reading a lot of different opinions online of how to go about exposing brick, and I just really want to do this the best way possible.


    Any advice for a newbie like myself would be much much appreciated!


    Thanks so much!

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    I typed in a long response but "the editor ate it".  Summarizing:


    The biggest issue with exposing brick is the incredible mess it creates, and not just from the stripping but also the subsquent cleaning of the brick.  The room must be well isolated from the rest of the house -- plastic sheets taped over doors, an exhaust fan in the window, etc.  If you have floors you want to preserve you'll need to protect them as well, especially from the weight of heavy falling chunks of plaster.   The grit in this job is like sandpaper on finished floors.


    You can be aggressive with a sledge hammer or methodical with a cold chisel and a pry bar.  After the wall is stripped, you need to wire brush it to remove loose plaster and mortar.  If you want very clean brick, you'll need to scrub it with weak solution of muratic acid to remove any limes stains. However, muratic acid will also burn wood (and the fumes will rust any metal with eight feet) so you'll need to protect your floors from that as well.


    Sealing can be done with either a water-based clear masonry sealer or shellac.  Just build it up until you get the sheen and seal you want.


    A hidden issue in stripping brick is the floor.  Stripping the plaster effectively expands the room by about 3/4".  If you move the baseboard back you could expose a gap in the flooring.  Also you need to figure out how to finish the intersecting plaster wall edges.  That's usually not a huge deal.  You can either use plaster or a wood trim piece.


    This presumes that you have plaster on top of brick.  If the wall has been furred out there could be electrical and pipes back there as well. 


    Remember that the builders intended that the wall would never been seen so you can either find rustically-beautiful brickwork behind that plaster or a hack job: mismatching bricks, ugly mortar joints, etc. There's no way to tell until you're like halfway through the job.


     

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    It is obnoxious, but not impossible. And thanks to the great advice of BrooklynRowHouse we managed to get through it a couple weeks ago and LOVE the results! We used a solution of 10 parts water to 1 part muriatic acid (which you can buy at any home supply store, we got ours at Sherwin Williams!). We scraped the walls first with a wire brush, then sprayed them down repeatedly with the muriatic mix (you can get a fence/deck/paint sprayer for under $20 at Sherwin Williams too- make sure you get the all plastic variety) and followed with a scrubbing by a plastic bristle brush. We had everything covered in multiple layers of plastic (we're trying to save the old wood floors underneath) to catch the falling crap. Then used lots of thrift store towels on top of the plastic to catch the water that we hosed down the walls with at the end. All of it went into big plastic bags. If you've got leftover acid mix, dump baking soda into it a couple tablespoons at a time (and stand back as it bubbles and foams) to neutralize the mix before you dump it. When it stops fizzing, it's good to dispose of.
    To see our finished fireplace:

    http://martineaubungalow.blogspot.com/2007/09/another-wow-day.html
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    Wow, the brick really came out nice. What did you seal it with? Orange shellac?
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    Ahhhhh, well. That's just the stripped brick! We haven't sealed it yet, but our mason (who also gave us tips on how to strip it) recommended clear QuickCrete Masonry sealer. Right now I'm concentrating on painting the exterior. More interior work is going to be awhile.
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    I am new to the block and am looking for specifics on what tools to use for the job of removing plaster and exposing brick.  I want to expose a long wall in my house, but could use a bit of help in determining which tools to buy.  Not sure whether I should use power tools, or even which tools to use. For non power tools, which chisels should I look at getting?  Instead of full respirators, could I get by with only using a paper mask? 

    Also, if you are interested to watch the progress of the house I created a blog to cover my adventures. 

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    I got impatient while waiting for a response, so I just started tearing things apart.  I posted some pictures and commentary over at the blog.


    http://baltimorerowhouse.blogspot.com/2008/01/exposing-brick.html

    • CommentAuthorAaron
    • CommentTimeJan 21st 2008
     
    Cool, that's a nice looking wall!

    It's obviously a moot point but I think you'd be fine with a decent quality paper mask--a respirator looks like it would have been overkill (but nice if you have it).  The tools you used looked about right too.

    If you didn't already check, in the future you can find some good stuff through the houseblogs search (top of the page link) or through the topics section of our site...

    http://www.houseblogs.net/topics/plaster
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    Thanks - it looks even better now with the bricks brushed and acid scrubbed! 

    I used a paper mask and goggles for some of the demo but the combination of the two resulted in much fogging of the glasses.  Foggy glasses, especially while working with the muriatic acid, isn't the most 'visually appealing' thing.  For most of the demo I ditched the mask, and turned the window fan up to suck the dust from out of the room and onto people's cars in front of my house. :)

    The wire brush took off most of the mortar on the face of the brick, but the acid helped get the last pesky bits.  So the wall doesn't drop dust on me while I sleep I figure it's best to seal the brick with something, but I want only a matte type sealer and not a glossy finish.  Help!
    • CommentAuthorAaron
    • CommentTimeJan 23rd 2008
     
    This houseblogger was looking for a non-glossy solution and ended up going with diluted Elmers Glue.

    http://mokindo.typepad.com/649_6th/2007/01/brick_sealant.html

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    Hello! I've been reading this here in the UK as my boyfriend has bought his first house which I am helping to do up and my job is an exposed brick wall in the kitchen. The whole house is being redone and its currently completly gutted, we have a lot of work ahead of us!

    The wall is now exposed, and I have just learnt on here that i need to scrub it with muriatic acid solution. I have a couple of questions if any of you could help me out - my boyfriend is a carpenter/builder and I want to show him I can do it by myself!   

    Do you make it up the acid solution in a bucket and then put it into a spray bottle?
    Do I make it up in a plastic bucket?
    Do I repoint the wall before of after I do this?
    Also, I want to seal it with something that is non shiny, any recommendations that I can get in the UK?

    So to check! I repoint the wall then scrub (or scrub then repoint) and then I seal the wall and thats it? (apart from all the hard work of course!)

    Thank you!

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