Hi Folks,
I thought I’d share an approach I’ve just perfected for creating great looking brick walls.
As many have suggested in the past, I first sprayed my plastic brick walls with a brick-colored spray paint (I used a flat primer made by Krylon but obviously, any brand of spray primer in a color you like will do). Just make sure it has a flat finish rather than glossy.
After the paint had dried for a a few days, I brushed all the brick with the following: I mixed joint compound (the kind used for finishing sheetrock walls}, with water. You can experiment with the ratio but I used about 1 part sheetrock compound to about 6 parts water. In other words, I filled an empty peanut butter jar with about 1 inch of compound and then filled the rest of the jar with water. My new approach is to add enough Woodland Scenics "Earth Color Liquid Pigment…the Slate Gray color, item number C1219, to make the solution look more like concrete. I would expect that some of you might prefer to use Woodland Scenic’s Concrete color, item C1217, but you might want to experiment. I tried the Concrete and it was too light-colored. I also discovered that if you add about a half teaspoon of liquid dish detergent to the solution (I used Palmolive), it helps break the surface tension of the liquid, enabling it to spread more freely on the brick walls. Another note here: Don’t shake the jar to mix all this solution…it ends up with too much foam at the top. Just gently stir the solution each time with whatever brush you’re going to use to apply it. It took me a while to realize I shouldn’t shake the jar…Duh. I’m real happy with the end result because the mortar lines look more realistic than when you use just the white joint compound without the added gray color.
After the mortar dries, I use Q-tips dipped in plain water to wipe off any excess on the surface of the bricks. You can “play” with the walls, adding more solution, letting it dry, and then wiping some off until you get