Painting Faux Brick

I'm still feeling under the weather this week, but I have managed to get quite a bit done.
We have lived in our home here in Las Vegas for two years now, and in my opinion we have made a lot of great improvements. Our home has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. It is your typical cookie cutter home and there are several exactly like it in our neighborhood. I really wanted our home to feel like "ours" and not the same as the neighbors. We also know that we will not be living in this home for more than a few more years. I've had to show some restraint knowing that I will have to sell it down the road.

Some of our great improvements have been changing out linoleum and carpet in the bathrooms for tile, as well as taking some old disgusting carpet that didn't match the rest of the home and putting in some laminate flooring. Our kitchen is on open area that is joined with our family room so we spend a lot of time there. I knew we couldn't have carpet that close to food and drink with a toddler and dog. We spend the most time in these rooms and we needed to LOVE them.

I have since been on a quest to lighten the kitchen and make it more my style. I do love the look of a traditional kitchen. We installed some trim along the top of our cabinets and added some faux brick behind the back splash. It really added a lot and set it apart from all the other homes, but the brick was just so fake looking, not to mention it kind of made the space feel too warm.

I wanted more of a worn and weathered "real brick" feel for my $23 home depot faux brick price. I got on Google and ran across this tutorial. She has a great video tutorial on a dry brush painting technique for her brick. I just used white latex paint I had on hand. I painted all the grout lines white with a small brush. Then I watered down a small amount of white latex paint, dipped my dry paint brush into the paint, and dabbed it onto a clean dry cloth to get off any excess paint. I found it easier to paint a section all horizontal and then paint it vertical to get a more natural look. I just lightly run my brush across the surface. If I ever had too much on the brick, I could spray it with a water bottle and use a rag to blot off the excess.

I'm really happy with the result and can't wait for my order of Old White Chalk Paint to get here in the mail so I can paint those kitchen cupboards. I already painted my small kitchen island in Graphite Chalk Paint and I love it. Slowly but surely this kitchen is turning into what I always imagined it could be.

I realized that I have never shown off my kitchen table. I think it was the second piece of furniture I ever refinished. We were in need of a lager kitchen table badly but I wasn't willing to fork out the money. We also didn't have a lot of space for a big dining room table. We came across this cute antique table at a thrift store for $35. It was the perfect size. I hunted down some chairs on Craigslist- the big carved chairs were $40 for all four and the small ones were $5 for both. I used chalk paint and wax on the chairs. I used a black latex paint for the base of the table. The top, of course, is my favorite. I got the idea from Red Hen Home. She had done a small coffee table with a french advertisement and I was in love. I took the image off The Graphics Fairy and used a projector to shine the image onto the tabletop, then painted it on by hand.

I can't wait to show you our kitchen when it's all done. It has come a long way.

Jenine



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