CURRENT FEATURED CUSTOMER: Andy Newman, Haringey, London, UK

This report was compiled and sent to us by Andy. Click on any of the images on this page to view a larger version.

1. Remove Pebbledash
   
   We removed the pebbledash by hand to reveal the house was painted red over the London Stock brick and painted pink over the soft reds. This paint had penetrated both types of bricks.
   
   
   
   
2. To remove paint
   
   Tried acid treatments, brick cleaners and high pressure washing and polishing off bricks without success, we were worried we were about start to damage the stock bricks.
   
   
   
   

3. Dyebrick Trial
   
   I cut out all the existing poor pointing with an angle grinder top to bottom and brushed the brickwork down with a wire brush to remove any loose flakes of paint and removed any other bits of pebble dash behind the Burglar Alarm and Gas box.
   
   I made good the spalled (frost damaged) red bricks by adding a standard red colourant to a strong mortar mix and polished the red bricks with a belt sander down by about ½ to 1mm back to the original brick, then washed the entire face down with water to get rid of the dust.
   
   2 Dyebrick trial patches were carried out, one with new yellow stock brick colour and one old blackened stock brick colour (Brick-Age), we had to check that the stock bricks with the red paint were porous to receive the stain which it was.
   
   
   

4. New Stock brick
   
   We decided eventually to go with the new stock brick appearance based on a refurbished house nearby.

5. Process
   
   I then started to stain the bricks yellow - the first couple of coats were very yellow to knock back the red paint and mortar from the pebble dash, then I started to add the watered down Brick-Age to my mix to take it down but leaving some bright yellow behind - Eventually you have to say "that's it?"
   
   
   
   Then I started pointing from top to bottom being very careful of the newly polished soft red bricks and the newly stained yellows by brushing off the excess mortar with a wet toothbrush.
   
   
   

6. After pointing I then rubbed down and repainted all the windows
   
   
   

7. The next stage will be to rebuild the boundary wall and install new sympathetic metal low railings and gate and remove the path and lay new Victorian pathway and build and plant the garden - this is planned for 2008.
   
   An amount of yellow and black stain has been kept back for the new garden wall.