Exterior House Upgrade on a BUDGET!

                So- here it is, I finally have gotten to the front of my house projects!!  Remember my peach of a house(literally the whole house was peach!)- I am finally taking control of the 70's peach brick.  After doing a lot of research  on the internet (mostly pinterest) about my options and talking to my contractor, I came to the conclusion that what I would like to do was not going to happen. Mostly because A) it is not in the budget. B) it is not in the budget! 

             What I wanted to do was to put stone over the brick and paint our siding.  That however is going to be a few years away!  I was told that we would probably have to knock down the existing brick to do the stone-ugh!  I was also told by my cute husband, that if we are going to pay to put up stone - we are getting rid of the siding and putting stucco up.  So hopefully it will happen sometime in the near future!! I am saying 5 years- we will see!  The list continues to grow -  new windows, pull out the front porch 5-10 feet, pour a front porch- so like $15k later!! One thing at a time I know!!

                 Here is a picture of what I would love my house to look like;

So onto plan B :

STAINING OUR EXISTING BRICK( ya I know- who does that? We do!!)

          So here is what I did- more research online!! We didn't want the look of painted brick so after seeing on a couple blogs  about staining brick I thought- why not?  Although the only thing I ever saw stained was a few fireplaces ( never an exterior of a house ) I figured it would work the same - right?  Anyways- anything has gotta be better than peach brick and if it looks real bad, then I guess we are painting our brick!!

           So off we go to the HomeDepot once again to the paint dept. where no one has ever heard of staining your brick-lol!! It's very experimental I guess- oh well it will be fine!!  So we find our stain color -a dark brown and have our semi-transparent concrete stain tinted.  I went home and tested a spot that was under our carport ( now garage ) by the back door.  The brown just turned the peach a darker color.  So back to HomeDepot for a new color!  We added the darkest grey to our brown and I went home and tried that - it will do, it will do!

           We started with the back of the house -since we didn't know how it was gonna turn out!   Here are some pictures of our first attempt.

           We rolled it on and it was so runny that it just dripped everywhere!!  The dark spot is where it looked like there were drips and I went over again to even it out- apparently it was dry and made it much darker than the rest !! Good job me! The key is one coat!! So now that I have a blotchy house - I am back to considering stone again!! We went back to HomeDepot to see if there was anything that would remove it - acid we tried a extra brick we had and it didn't work! Great there is nothing I can do to fix my house!! The picture makes it look waaay worse than it really does! My mom came to visit and I asked her what she thought - she said it looked like my house had been on fire!! That made me feel real good!

           After a few months literally looking at it we decided it wasn't that bad-besides who will ever see the back of the house but us? No bbq's here- haha!  So we then stained the other half of the back of the house which is here ( do not judge me for the junk in the backyard or on the patio- we haven't had a garage for 6 months)

                                                 (that is not blotchy-shade from the tree)

                     So after a month of having the back of the house and the side stained, I decided the only way I would do the front of my house, was if I brushed on each brick and grout one at a time so there would be no blotchy crap!!  So I had to get myself motivated -cause I thought it would take me a week to do one half.  I had to wake up at 6 -ugh so it would be in shade since its you know like 100 degrees here!! So I did it we power washed it and I started on Monday, and I got the one half of my house done in one day!!! Hooray!!  Here it is:  DAY 1

                                           Notice the beautiful landscaping -soon to be gone!!

                   DAY 2:
                 I finished staining the cap and was so happy how much better it looked, I decided to rip out all the Iris that I cant stand so below notice how much better it is already looking!  I cant finish staining the other half until my sweet husband cuts or pulls the delightful roses away from the wall.  So I'm going to my moms for a week and there it will sit half peach, half brown/grey!! oh well, better to have half the house looking better I guess!!

 It turned out much lighter then the back of the house,

but its even and that makes me happy happy happy!

 

So now I have done my job, discouraged any of you from staining your brick!!haha -I do think it looks better than it did and that's really all I was going for- I wasn't expecting miracles!!

 

So here is the color of the stain

 

crazy how dark it is!!

 

 

I will post the rest of the house when I finish along with our new garage- almost done!! We are picking out paint colors to paint the garage and house -good times!