OK, here's the story: :)
We have a house that is stone built on three walls, and brick built on the rear wall (solid 9" jobbie, south facing).
The previous owners saw fit to built the most hideous extension known to mankind, and then render it along with the brick rear wall.
This house is 1930s ish and built with lime mortar. Clearly the guys that rendered the extension and rear wall didn't have the word "lime" in their dictionary as it's now pretty much all blown and cracked.
Now, with any other house I would expect the bricks under the blown render to be shot as well. However, the bricks used in this wall are all nearly as hard as engineering bricks. They're that hard that hammer drills won't touch them and SDS is the only way.
Now, due to exception levels of no-money-at-all for the forseeable future, there is no way we can afford to have the wall re-rendered.
I've been thinking about either:
a) Drilling it all over and injecting gripfil or latex self-levelling compound etc (whatever will stick the render back onto the wall)
b) Removing all the old render myself and painting the wall directly.
Currently b) is my preferred option because I believe the bricks will be OK under the blown render.
Would this be a big mistake?
Please advise. :)