Small Changes, Big Impact - Painting Our Exterior Brick

We have made extensive changes to our home, inside and out.  However, some of the most high impact changes happened to be the cheapest / easiest ones we've made.

(Our house at the end of last summer)

Last year, I shared the before and after of our exterior, here.  However, the many changes that we made were done over the course of about 4 or 5 years.  The change that took our renovations from nice, to wow, in my opinion, was\ painting our brick and adding fresh landscaping.  Don't just take my word for it, take a look.  Here is a picture of our home after we changed the roof-line/windows/siding:

This picture was taken just about a year ago.  I remember being so excited to get our flower boxes planted, stepped back to take it in, and realized it was kind of sad looking!  That is when I knew something had to be changed.  Here is our home after new paint/plants:

The paint update and landscaping were by far the cheapest changes we made and really finished the look of our home.  I chose all of the grasses/shrubs and painted the exterior on my own:

The hardest part of the whole process, in my opinion, was choosing the brick color!  Ok, colors; you may have noticed that our front steps, which were previously stained brown, were lightened with stone and white paint.  I'm not going to lie, I hired that portion out!

As for the brick, here is the easy step by step:

1) Always buy paint samples and put them up!  I actually spent more money on samples than I did on the actual gallon of paint that it took to paint the brick!  But it was worth it.  The color I thought I wanted and the color we chose were very different.  After getting all the samples up, I knew I wanted to stay in the same color family but it was important to me to create high contrast.  That meant either a very light or very dark paint.  The dark paint was grounding and actually makes our siding read a little bit lighter, at least to me.  I've always wished our siding was lighter so I was really happy with the color choice!

Here is a (lousy) instagram picture of just a few of the colors I tried:

2) Prime the brick using a thick/nappy roller.  

3) Paint, using any paint that is used on masonry, again with the nappy roller.  We have a JC Licht / Benjamin Moore right by our house so I went with the paint recommended by their employees.    

That's it.  It took me a day to paint the brick.  Just make sure that there isn't any rain in the forecast for a day or two after you paint.  To finish, I added annual flowers that contrasted nicely with the paint color:        

In my original reveal post, I mentioned that I wanted to paint our door black.  It seemed that many of those that commented thought that I should keep the door stained since I have a solid wood door:  

So, I've held off, but I'm still SOOO tempted to make the change!  Our door is in need of a good staining, so what do you guys think?  Stick with the stain, or should we paint it black?  Or a black stain?!?!?!  

Please stop back by tomorrow to share your outdoor painting projects:

 I'll be joining Kristin, from My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia, Tiffany, from Living Savvy, Angie from Echoes of Laughter, Lucy from Craftberry Bush, Shauna, from Satori Design for Living to host the party!  Be sure to stop by and check out their decorating projects!