Kitchen- Faux Brick Wall

 

When I purchased the house, the kitchen wall had a wrap over the plaster and due to a previous flood, the wrap was peeling.  I consulted with a contractor and he said it would cost $3,000 to remove the wrap from the entire kitchen, drywall and repaint.  I had seen some posts on Pinterest about using brick panels from Home Depot to make a faux brick wall.  

https://www.homedepot.com/p/1-4-in-x-48-in-x-96-in-HDF-Kingston-Brick-Panel-KINGSTON/311316427

In Baltimore row homes, it is very common to have exposed brick interior, so I thought it might be a little more believable. 



I used a jig saw to cut the panels and installed them on the wall with screws.  I did not use glue, which is recommended by the manufacturer of the panels, but I wanted to make it easier to re-postion them if needed. 

Once the panels were installed on the wall, I used spackle to completely cover the panels to give the brick texture to make it feel more real and hide where the pieces come together.  I found the most realistic look was to cover all of the "mortar" with spackle.  Then I used caulk to fill in any remaining gaps. 


The final step is to cover the entire wall with a mixture of paint and water (mostly water) to seal in the spackle.  This can give the wall a tint of color, I used the same color as the walls which is Olympic Mountains by Sherwin Williams.

I liked it so much, I ended up doing the same thing along the wall with the cabinets and the upstairs bedroom wall.  Both of these walls had also suffered damage in the same incident.  

Link to Light Fixture on Amazon




Disclaimer: Amazon links are affiliate links.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Removing a non-load bearing wall

Image
The first thing I did when I moved into the house, before I moved my furniture in because I knew it would be a mess, was removing the wall between the "den" and the living room.   Disclaimer: the only reason I knew it was safe to attempt this and the wall was non-load bearing is because every other house on the street was built the same way and this wall was added by a previous owner.  It was still framed as a cutout with drywall in the middle.  Don't attempt to remove any wall that you are unsure if it is load bearing. This was my first ever DIY attempt at anything, and I did not go about it well.  I should have bought the proper tools, but instead, I demolished the wall with nothing other than a hand saw I purchased from Dollar Tree and a razor blade.   First I cut into the drywall with the razor to look inside and see what I was working with.  It was nothing more than a couple of 2x4s to hold the drywall in place, so I used the saw/razor blade ...
Read more

Kitchen Cabinets

Image
  Covid was the first time that I had to spend an extended amount of time in my house, and I set up my home office in the kitchen and I realized how much I hated it.  I had always planned on painting the cabinets, but the catalyst to take action was staring at them all day for 9 hours and no social plans to distract me.  I had read that painting cabinets was more difficult than expected, and that definitely proved to be true.  It took so many hours, I lost track- at least a few weeks of continuous work.  The wood grain on my cabinet doors was very prominent, so it took a lot of wood filler and sanding to remove the grain enough to paint.   I started by removing all of the cabinet doors, applying wood filler, then sanding.  I did 3 rounds of this per cabinet, then I painted with primer and the wood grain was still too prominent.  Then, I wood filled and sanded, primed, wood filled and sanded again.  By that point, I was done. If I had to ...
Read more

Front Porch

Image
One of the main selling points of the house was the front porch. I've always dreamed of having a front porch to sit out and watch the rain.  The front porch also happened to be one of the most neglected parts of the house.  If the overhang of your porch does not extend far enough out from the floor of the porch, then the wood on the edge will start to rot.   The first thing I did was create a gate because I have 2 dogs and live on a busy road, so I was very paranoid about the dogs running out into the street.  I also wanted to be able to sit out on the porch with the dogs without worrying about a leash.  The next thing that needed to get repaired was the floor of the porch.  One night I looked out the window and saw a big Baltimore rat climbing into the hole in the porch, and the next day I needed to do something about it.  There was a subfloor under the boards, so I used a circular saw to just cut through the layer of boards, without cutting into...
Read more