no one is fooled, but who cares?

The interior brick in my loft at 402 had already been painted a vanilla-white before I moved in, probably to unify off-color concrete patching. I’d prefer the natural brick but stripping paint from brick is not for the faint of heart and I just wasn’t up to the laborious, dirty task with all my stuff already here. So I painted over it.

First I checked color outside in good light, and settled on Georgian Brick, Historic Color-50 from Benjamin Moore. A quart costs about $ixteen bucks.

Since I painted only a small 2 foot by 10 foot section under my front window, a quick rolled coat was complete in under 10 minutes.

Don’t worry if you miss a few little spots. It just adds character.

The latex flat undercoat dried in about 30 minutes, so then I could begin to add color and detail. The ClockTower natural aged brick has dark staining…

...and a white surface flush called efflorescence is fairly common, too.

So I added a bit of both. I brushed in darker paint here and there from a little 5 buck sample cup of “Charcoal”…

...then rubbed it out with a dirty rag, to add shadow and depth.

Faking efflorescence was easy, the scratchy side of an old dish sponge scrubbed off the new paint and revealed bits of the original off-white underneath.

I’m no faux painter but the effect in daylight isn’t bad.

And no one is fooled, but who cares?

At night under regular incandescent light the color grows richer and adds warmth. It's almost handsome.

And it sure beats the original off-white. 

About $21 and three hours tops, including clean-up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faux_finishing