When we bought a 110-year-old South Philadelphia rowhome, one of the first things we knew we wanted to do was take down all the 1980’s wallpaper, rip the plaster down, and see what beautiful brick was being hidden underneath. What could possibly go wrong?
Our enthusiasm for the project is probably the only thing we had going for us. Having never before taken plaster down, especially 100+-year-old plaster over brick, I had no idea what I was in for. All the tutorials I read were really for exposing brick that was hidden behind either plaster board or drywall, which it turns out, is a much easier endeavor. For those applications, it is essentially a matter of tearing down the drywall, cleaning up the surface of the brick and then sealing. Piece of cake.
As just about every other project in this house turned out, this was a much harder job than expected. If you notice in the picture above (yes, that’s my handiwork) the plaster line is left in a jagged artistic line that lends a great deal of visual interest to the wall. It gives the whole room an industrial chic feel and feels like it was designed to be that way. Well, that was just a happy accident. About 4 hours into chiseling off seemingly endless chunks of plaster, I realized there was NO way I was going to finish the whole wall.
They weren’t this bad but it was pretty close
My hands were bloody and raw. It seemed the plaster was so intertwined with the brick that some sections took FOREVER to expose the brick. So about halfway up the wall and 6 hours of hammering and hand chiseling into the project, I decided to take a breather. After some well-deserved break time, I had an idea. Thinking of a popular bar nearby that I was recently at, I remembered how nice I thought their outside courtyard brick looked with jagged cuts of plaster over brick. It was very intentional on their part, but I figured maybe it just might work here. The best part was, if I did it that way, I was just about done. If I did it the standard way and finished the entire wall, I had 7 to 10 hours of hard manual labor ahead of me. It was a no-brainer.
In the end, I was very happy with the result. Nobody knew it wasn’t planned and we matched our decor around the style the wall created. I guess the moral(s) of the story is: always know what you’re getting into. And when it turns out you didn’t have a clue what you were getting into, improvise, adapt, and take the shortcut if you can!
Here is a good link for how to (properly) expose brick:
