Removing paint + cladding adhesive/mortar from brickwork

Oct 19, 2005 4 Replies

I'm just doing a theoretical exercise really - but I'd like to know what is possible.



Our 1930's semi has horrible cladding on the front of it. On the sides/back it's rendered (well, whatever you call that lumpy bumpy rough splatter render - it's certianly not painted pebbledash).



It seems that the original house (at least on the sides) had bare brick a few feet off the ground and then some kind of render etc from there up. It's since had this splatter render stuff applied from top to bottom.



I'd love to take off all the cladding and go back to how it was originally - however I'd expect to have to get the front re-rendered - however if I did that, I'd like to reinstate the bare brick section at the bottom.



Considering that I'd probably need to get the sides done at some point too - what is the chance of removing the render/paint/adhesive etc and getting back to nice bare bricks? The area isn't that large really (side and front about 3' high). The painted area is in the porchway, cladding at the front, render stuff at the sides.



Any thoughts on that? Doubt we'll ever do it (no money!) but knowing what is possible is helpful.



Thanks



D

Are we talking about the "Never paint your house again, we'll spray it all in plastic" type of coating? I did remove some from one wall, and it was remarkably easy because they seemed to coat the wall first in something that ressembles wet sand, and there was no real adhesion to the brickwork. In this particular case the coating had demonstrably failed and whether other walls where it hadn't would be that easy I can't say.

Could be easy as pie or could be impossible without ruining the surface of the bricks. The only way to find out is to find an inconspicuous spot and attack it gently

Anna

Snag is that anything which was originally rendered is unlikely to have decent (facing) bricks underneath.

Yup - no problem with that - we'd like to return it to how it originally was (brick bottom 3', rendered top). But the bottom part is currently painted in some places (porch), rendered (side) and cladded (front). Having the bottom part as bare brick (which I believe it was originally when compared to all the other houses in the street, and more importantly the other half of the semi.

D

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