Unfortunately the best thing to do is to repaint it after lots of scrapping. I also have a brick home. If I add on as we plan to do we’ll most likely need to paint it.

Here’s a good article on the reason why repainting is best.

The short of what I’ve learned in the past is…you never know why they did it. Our brick fireplace was painted…I tried to remove it…there were awful colors under various layers of the paint

There are companies that can blast the paint off, using walnut shells. I have no idea about the cost

@DrBill – Walnut shells? LoL! That article, that @SpatzieLover linked to made me think twice about removing the paint, and definitely scared me off from any kind of blasting method. But thanks for the idea :-)

My house is slurry over brick and it is beautiful. If you do choose to try and remove the paint and it doesn’t work out well, maybe you can slurry it and you might like it better than the paint.

Good idea @JLeslie. I’ve seen some homes transformed with slurry.

Be careful. I know a couple who paid a ton to have the paint removed from an old brick house only to find that the brick and masonry had previously had such extensive repairs made that it looked awful. They ended up painting the house again.

I don’t know what slurry is but I’m off to find out. that’s an awful word (slurry)

@perspicacious Slurry is beautiful, you see it a lot where I live on French Country style homes. It’s kind of like using plaster on interior walls, adds depth and old world feel. I tried to find a photo for you, but it is almost impossible to perceive the slurry on the photos, inclduing the photo of my own house, because house photos are taken at such a distance to get the whole house in the shot.

Thanks, JLeslie.