How did my brick house change color?

[micky]

This page starts with two pictures of the outside of my home from 1957 to 64, when I was 10 to 17. There are more if you click.

When I lived there, it was red brick house, the standard red brick appearance. But as I wrote elsewhere, the brick was in many places chipping off, some chips as big as 2x3" and almost 1/2" thick. On someon'es recommendation, I painted the whole house with clear silicone-something, except I couldn't do the chimney, which as you can see is now short and squat, and not even as tall as the peak of the roof.

How did the brick change to look like this? Some of the brick is almost white, and most is one shade or another of pink. None of it is the dark red the house used to be. It looks nothing like it used to look!

Did they put a whole new layer of brick on it? When I was there, only some sections were falling apart, for example, not the sides of the house afaicr. And wouldn't that make the window- and door-frames further set back, but look at picture 19, 22, and even maybe 17.

If not a new layer of bricks, how can different bricks now be many different colors and shades. Are they treated individually? Have you seen this before?

If you want close-ups of the brick, click on any picture at the top and go to photos 1, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, and 22.

Also interesting is that leading up to the side door, picture 18, the house when we bought it had 3-foot mill-stones buried in the dirt. Doughnut-shaped. Esp. suitable for a house on Spring Mill Road. But now there are only flagstones. Who goes to the trouble to dig out big heavy mill stones to replace them with flagstones? And why?

These were my two questions and the reason for the post.

Stray thoughts follow:

They also got rid of the screened-in porch. Maybe there are no more insects**. The porch was still there 10 years ago, when I tried to visit. Pictures 21 and 22. They also replaced the large sliding glass door there with what seems like glass panels on both side of a standard-sized door.

**I've found that insects are a lot harder to find, at least in Baltimore and Guatemala. How long has it been since you had a bunch of bugs squashed on your windshield after driving, even in the summer?

Picture 21 might interest some of you. Both washer and dryer used to be on the wall with the window, where there was a laundry sink to the left. Now the sink is between the washer and dryer. The house is on a crawl space, overwhelmingly muddy the one time I went down there, but still not hard to move the water supply and the sink drain, and it opens up the window area, but I'm still surprised anyone went to the trouble just for the window. If not that, why?

The picture also seems to show that the inside door to the den and much of the wall it was in were removed so the den is now sort of an open space off of the hall.

The tress have grown, they take very good care of the yard etc. and it looks a lot pretter than when we lived there, although it was a very nice house then too. Cost $20,000 in 1957.

Right across the street from a country club we could not join, but my mother and I collected 40 to 100 golf balls every couple years from our front yard. Periodically she sold them to a driving range. And we watched their fireworks on July 4. (Not the ground-based ones, like the US flag and the man shooting an arrow at a target. Remember those? Do they still have them?)

I mentioned in another post that the builder of the home, built in 1954, had made an appointment with my mother to see it, and he was undoubtedly going to give her some money to make up for her loss (as he had with others), EVEN THOUGH SHE WAS NOT THE ORIGINAL BUYER, and he had no American legal duty. And even though I'm sure he didn't buy bad brick on purpose, and it was too late to claim against whoever sold him the bricks. An honorable, responsible man. Who died in the week or so between making the appointment and the appt. itself. I wish I knew his name.

Arthur, please forward to J, etc.

[Retirednoguilt]

The clue is the flaking off of the chips of brick. This is a sign of excessive moisture and repeated freezing/thawing. The white color is called efflorescence and is crystallized salts originating in the ground water that infiltrated the bricks, probably pulled up by capillary attraction from masonary underneath the ground surface.

You sealed the exterior surface of the exposed bricks with the silicone which drastically slowed evaporation. That caused the bricks to remain damp and susceptible to flaking when the temp dropped below freezing and the ice crystals expanded within the brick.

The primary cause of the problem is poor drainage of soil immediately around the perimeter of the foundation. Causes include possible longtime damaged/clogged gutters, improperly graded soil, or a very high water level from an underground spring. You made the condition much worse by applying the silicone coating to the facade. It would not surprise me if there was a mold problem in the outside walls as well. Be thankful you don't live there any more.

[Clare Snyder]

It is quite possible the brick veneer was removed and replaced. Also possible some brick was replaced and the brick was "limed" or stained to give it a distressed look. The pictures are not of high enough quality to get a good look a the brick

[kelown]

That's really the most interesting part of your post.