Painting Exterior Brick

The simple solution of painting brick to change their color may have hidden costs down the road. This is especially true on brick chimneys.

When you paint brick, it will surely be the start of a lot of needless problems, and often sooner rather than later.

The real problems are hiding beneath the painted surface, as the paint may be the only thing still holding the broken brick faces together. As moisture tries to escape within the chimney but cannot due to it being trapped beneath the painted surface.

There lies the start of big problems. The moisture that is being trapped inside the bricks will expand with our normal freeze/thaw cycles. This creates fatigue within the brick itself, crushing and breaking down the bricks from within. All brick masonry material needs to breathe. When we paint the brick, it seals them up way too tight.

With a close examination by peeling back some of those blistered areas, it will reveal some serious brick and mortar damage.

Replacing just a couple of “problem brick” on the chimney normally isn’t the answer and definitely will not solve your problems.

Areas on the chimney today may look perfectly fine but maybe hiding very saturated and weak masonry beneath this painted surface.

I often tell my customers that they have a couple of choices to resolve their dilemma. They can repaint right over the damaged brick or when it gets to a point that they can’t live with this unsightly look on their home, the chimney can be dismantled and replaced with brick and mortar of a complimentary color.

In the past, we have done more replacement repair work by using white brick and white mortar than we have with any other color changes.

Now here is the funny thing, some folks have had us rebuild their chimney, and then after our work was completed they had their painter just re-paint right over the same chimney again.

……It’s that same old story, as history will surely repeat itself!