Brick Painting North York

Need a Brick Painter in North York?

The masonry on a North York house has usually been standing a long time. In Mount Dennis, 32% of the homes predate 1960 and another 34% went up between 1961 and 1980. Bathurst Manor is 36% pre-1960, and Banbury-Don Mills is 25% pre-1960 with a further 30% from the 1961 to 1980 stretch. Those are City of Toronto neighbourhood profile numbers. So the brick on a typical 1958 bungalow around here has already taken close to seventy Toronto winters, and it has opinions about what you put on it.

Painting brick is the biggest visual change you can make to a house, and the hardest one to undo. Get the product wrong and you have sealed water inside a wall that used to dry itself out. So we treat it as two decisions. First, what your wall can safely carry. Then, what colour you want it.

What Painting Brick Actually Takes

Brick is not a flat surface you put colour on. It is a porous material that moves water vapour, and every decision on a brick job comes back to protecting that. The industry measures it in perms. The Brick Industry Association's Technical Note 6 classes anything above 10 perms as vapour permeable, 1 to 10 as semi-permeable, and 0.1 or under as vapour impermeable. It also notes that treatments made for brick commonly report 20 to 85 perms, and that piling on extra layers of any treatment lowers its permeance. So a heavy build of ordinary film paint on brick is the failure mode, not the finish.

That same technical note is direct about ordinary acrylic latex on brick. It forms a film on the surface rather than penetrating the pores, it is typically only vapour semi-permeable, and applying it to brick creates a recurring exterior maintenance task requiring multiple reapplications over the life of the brickwork. We will still use a masonry-rated acrylic where the wall calls for it. We just tell you what you are signing up for.

Before any of that, we look at moisture. The white crusty bloom on brick is efflorescence, and the Concrete Masonry and Hardscapes Association lays out the three conditions behind it. There have to be soluble compounds in the masonry, moisture has to be present to pick up the salts and carry them to the surface, and some force such as evaporation or hydrostatic pressure has to move the solution. Their guidance warns that applying a clear coating to a wall that tends to effloresce, without fixing the cause, can lead to surface spalling of masonry units. The brick association agrees: efflorescence on the exterior is a sign that excess moisture is present, and that gets sorted out before any treatment.

Then prep and primer. Brick itself is normally pH neutral, but it is laid in mortar that is chemically basic, so the technical note recommends an alkaline-resistant primer or a paint specifically designated for use on masonry. New or repaired masonry gets at least 30 days to cure and dry completely, which matches what our exterior paint's own data sheet asks for. Cleaning is the least aggressive method that works, usually a stiff non-metallic brush and soapy water or low-pressure washing. Sandblasting is out, because it damages brickwork. Unbuffered acids are out as a general cleaning method for the same reason. If you want to see the rest of what we handle, our North York painting services are all in one place.

The Brick Work We Do in North York

• Limewash

  The oldest treatment for brick and still one of the best. Limewash is a mineral and water based coating made from slaked or hydrated lime thinned with water and brushed on. Lime is already a component of masonry mortar, so it is fully compatible with brick and does not change the wall's vapour permeability. It forms calcite crystals bonded into the masonry by absorbing carbon dioxide from the air, so it weathers instead of peeling.

• Mineral paint

  The modern cousin of limewash, patented in Germany in the late 1800s. Mineral paint gives an opaque, matte, single-colour finish without changing the substrate's water vapour permeability. It is UV resistant, contains zero VOCs, and its high pH resists biological growth. The industry note says mineral paints typically carry warranties of 15 years or more, with projects that have gone 30 years without recoating.

• Masonry-rated coatings on brick

  Bare brick set in basic mortar needs an alkaline-resistant primer or a product specifically designated for masonry, or the alkalinity eats the paint's durability. We keep the build light, because every extra heavy coat lowers the wall's permeance.

• Already-painted brick, brought back

  Brick that was painted decades ago and is now flaking is a different job from bare brick. We take off what is loose, work out why the coating failed, prime the bare patches, and put the lightest system back on that will cover. This is where a masonry acrylic makes the most sense, since the wall's original breathability is already compromised.

• Foundations, parging and porch masonry

  The parged foundation band, the porch piers and the retaining wall around them take the most splash, salt and freeze, so they age first. Ground water carrying soluble salts is a known efflorescence source on basement and retaining walls, so we check drainage before coating anything at grade.

• Interior exposed brick and fireplace surrounds

  Interior limewash on brick gives a soft, suede-like look. Two honest caveats. On a solid masonry wall, interior brick should be treated like exterior brick to keep the original construction's vapour permeability. And because water removes limewash over time, interior limewashed surfaces are not typically washable.

• Mortar joints, sills and window surrounds

  Painting brick also means dealing with the mortar joints, the concrete sills, the lintels and the wood trim that meets them. Anything failing there is a water path, and a water path becomes efflorescence, then spalling.

Nine Things Worth Knowing Before You Paint Brick

1. Painting brick is close to a one-way door. Some treatments are difficult or impossible to remove without damaging the brickwork, because of the bond formed with the masonry. Removal usually means a proprietary chemical stripper, not a pressure washer.
2. Limewash can be undone, but only for a few days. Some limewashes come off with water within the first few days of application. One manufacturer states its limewash can be washed off immediately, and the whole application removed up to two days later with a high-force pressure washer.
3. Ask about perms, not just colour. Above 10 perms is vapour permeable. Brick treatments commonly report 20 to 85. If nobody can tell you the number, that is the answer.
4. More coats means less breathing. Thickness lowers permeance, so multiple layers of any treatment reduce it. Heavy applications on brick are the classic way to trap water in a wall.
5. Fix the white bloom before you coat. Efflorescence means moisture is moving through the wall and evaporating at the face. Coat over it and you get adhesion failure, or worse, spalled brick faces.
6. Brick is neutral, mortar is not. Brick is normally pH neutral but sits in chemically basic mortar. That is why an alkaline-resistant primer or a masonry-designated paint is recommended, not a general exterior wall paint.
7. New masonry waits at least 30 days. New or repaired brick, block or parging needs to cure and dry completely before any treatment. Our exterior paint's own sheet says the same thing about new masonry.
8. Glazed brick will not take limewash or mineral paint. Those products need access to the pore structure of the brick, and a glazed face is hard and effectively impermeable. A film coating over roughened glaze has very limited durability and is not recommended.
9. Never let anyone sandblast your brick. Abrasive methods damage brickwork permanently. It is a one-afternoon shortcut that costs you the face of every brick on the wall.