Monday, November 16, 2015

How to Paint Faux Brick

Hey everyone! I'm here today to show you part of a project that I'm really kind of proud of!  And while I can't show you the whole thing quite yet (I'll come back and edit this post after my other one goes up on MakeIt and LoveIt), I did want to show you how I painted this faux brick.


For this project I knew that I wanted to use a brick panel, but I wanted the brick to be gray with a whitewashed look. However, the brick panel that I bought from Home Depot came in this reddish color. While this color in and of itself isn't bad, it wasn't what I was going for...nothing a little painting couldn't fix!



Are you ready to paint some brick? For this project you will need:
  • brick panel
  • background color paint (I used Notre Dame by Valspar)
  • grout color paint (I used White on White by Glidden)
  • white paint (for the white washed look)
  • paint that is a few shades darker than your background color (I made a custom color from acrylic paints)
  • paint brush
  • rags
After cutting the panel down to fit my project, I painted the entire thing gray (Notre Dame by Valspar).


Then I came back in and painted the "grout" white (White on White by Glidden). This part is probably the most time consuming!


Once the panel was dry I grabbed some of my acrylic craft paint to help me give it the white washed look and to make a slightly darker gray to shade it in and add dimension.


I took my paint brush and put a very light amount of white paint on it and dusted the brick with it.  Then I took a rag and rubbed off the extra paint. I worked my way across the panel making sure to rub off the excess.


After I was done whitewashing it, I mixed some of my black and white acrylic paint together until I got a gray that was slightly darker than the gray on the panel.


I dipped my rag directly into the darker gray and rubbed it randomly on bricks across the panel.  I did not brush every brick with it and on some bricks I only rubbed it part way and on other bricks I tried to paint the whole brick.  This was to give some more depth and dimension to the panel.


And that's it!  Super easy and a total transformation from the original red brick!


Stay tuned for the full reveal on this project next week!