A step-by-step guide to installing a thin brick veneer wall or fireplace chimney in your home
This was the most nerve-wracking thing for me to do on this project. I didn’t want to mess up these awesome bricks that I finally got my paws on! I had a vision of variation, randomness, and antiquity in mind. I loved brick projects that had a lot of colors, but not too much color that it looked bad in the end, you know?
It literally took me two days of research and looking up stains on Amazon to really commit to buy and try a colorant kit I found by Masonry Cosmetics, Inc.
Here’s the thing, this is like a starter kit that gives you options to find the color you’re looking to change your masonry to. Then you can buy more of the stain that you are actually using in the end to finish your project. Since we just wanted a cluster of colors in our project, all we had to do was buy this kit. Depending on your project, you may have to buy additional supplies and stains.
Here is a close up of the colors that came in this kit. They also say on Amazon that you can email the company for help if you’re really worried and want to make the perfect match for mixing and staining. They have great reviews for customer service, so if this is what you’re searching for dive right in!
As for me, I just needed to test and try and make the most of what I created. So I laid out my testing station, mixed the stains as the instructions on the box instructed, and started my trial bricks.
We only had red bricks for the corner pieces, so I needed to make some of them darker like the flat thin bricks that we had that were already dark, and some lighter like white bricks that we had purchased from the mason.
As you can see in the image above, I would write out my measurements of how much stain to water ratio I was doing before brushing the brick.
My final formula to make the white brick: 1/2 cup of water to 7 tbsp of stain powder, about three different coats of brushing. And for the black brick: 1/2 cup of water to 7 tbsp, about two different coats of brushing. So the only stain powders I ended up using were the white and black, not yellow, red or blue. The kit was enough for me to get through our entire project which was nice!
IMPORTANT side note: if you have to cut a lot of the bricks, you may want to save the staining for after you’ve placed them on the wall. We used a tile cutter and that includes soaking the brick in water so the color can wash out. I stained a lot of the bricks before and a few after.
Again, I highly recommend this stain kit that you can order off of Amazon, it’s so simple to use with great resources. Now, on to the next and final steps! Doing the grout and German smear!
