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Hi - I’m looking to change the look of the entire exterior of my house, it is a brick veneer with these light orange/cream colored bricks. They’re probably very familiar - they have quite a smooth finish and are not particularly porous (water doesn’t soak right in rather beads off the surface).
My current plan is to spread Dunlop Acrylic Render using gloves hand/sponge etc to create a light bagged look - that is I want to fill the mortar lines pretty well flush with the brick face but I want to leave the smooth surface of the brick face in tact (in a trial run basically this leaves the bricks looking fully coated but only the mortar lines really have the render in them, the surface looks sort of painted by the color of the render but doesn’t have any texture/sand of the render itself). Other than pressure washing the brick and removing effervescence with vinegar and letting it dry well, I don’t plan to apply anything else to the surface and would spread the render directly onto the brick.
My current plan is then to paint over this lightly bagged brick with a few coats of an exterior paint such as Taubman’s All Weather. It is self priming so I wouldn’t intend to apply any other primer or sealer over the light render coat, I’d just paint right on top of it.
What I’d like to confirm is:
1 - does the plan sound reasonable to achieve a durable and lasting finish?
2 - I keep reading comments on forums from people saying never to paint bricks because they need to breathe and they’ll crumble and crack eventually if you do. They also cite creating ongoing maintenance.
I’m sure these must be exaggerated opinions to a certain extent - all exteriors eventually require maintenance and it’s the cost/reward of having a nicer looking exterior. Also I accept that bricks can absorb and need to disperse that moisture back out, but I see painted brick all the time that looks very much in tact and has been there for years, so clearly it can be done safely.
Will a paint like the Taubmans All Weather be suitable to go over the top of my lightly bagged brick? That is, does it allow the brick/render coat to breathe if it needs to deal with moisture, either by being a breathable topcoat itself, or does it create a seal to prevent the moisture absorption to begin with? The paint says it’s suitable
for brick, though it’s not a specialist masonry paint. If a specialist masonry paint is required I’d look into that though.
3 - Would I be better off using a product like Dulux texture to achieve the same thing? After watching a dulux video applying it, I suspect I can probably achieve a similar lightly bagged look though I suspect it would be more expensive especially if second coat is needed - but at the same time the color is part of the product itself so it may have benefit in that respect compared to a few layers of paint.
