Faux Bricks: The Beginning

The downstairs bedrooms of our new to us house look like somewhere you would hold someone hostage.  They are really terrible.  It doesn't help that we are storing the chairs we used in a Zombie themed party we hosted last year...  I hate the texture on the bottom half of the room, but we weren't sure what to do.  I thought about bead-board, faux stones, etc, but most of the options are really expensive.  Faux brick and faux stone would have cost well more than $500, so that option got dropped pretty quickly.  So, I decided to make my own faux brick.

This is the wall I decided to start with in case it turned out terrible.  Yes, that very tiny wall.

After I primed the wall, as seen above, I got the materials I needed:  1/2 inch tape (I found this in the electrical tape section), painters tape, joint compound, a putty knife, a ruler, a level, and a marker or pencil.  I measured out 9"x3" bricks and taped them off with the electrical tape.  I taped off the edge of the wall with the painters tape.  This also helped keep the ends of the electrical tape down.

Next came the fun part.  I put some joint compound on my putty knife and started to add my bricks.

For a more real look, I took a plastic fork to add additional texture to some of the bricks.

When the joint compound begins to dry but not yet hardened, it will begin to lose its shine.  This is when to pull off the tape.

The edges looked a little too raised, so when the compound became dry enough to not be sticky, but still wet enough to shape with my fingers, I very lightly touched them with my finger to flatten the edge.

 

 This gave the bricks a more realistic edge.

Once I finished the whole thing, it looked really stinkin cool, if I do say so myself.  :)

One more time, with feeling.

  

I debated on painting them brick colored, but I really like the look in grays.  I am going to go over the whole thing with primer, then paint them.  I am just really happy about the new texture, which looks tons better than it looked before.  It will take a while to do the bottom of the entire room this way, but this was waaaaaay cheaper, and it looks darn good.  Yay!