A Fine Finish
A few pages ago, in "Finishing Up," we looked at a test wall used to sample various brick finishes. In Fall 2007, the chapel walls were ready to receive finishes!
The facade and decorative elements of the chapel are being finished with a white rendering. The brick sides and back will be coated with a red color wash.
Coatings serve both decorative and protective purposes. Covering brick surfaces with a thick mortar, or rendering, then scribing and painting faux joints gives the building the appearance of stone -- the most prestigious building material. This technique was widely used for important buildings in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Painting a color wash on a brick building was another treatment little known until recently. Protected places on colonial buildings show that masons covered these walls of unevenly fired brick with a solution that made all the brick a uniform red. Pencilling (painting) in white joints added to the appearance of precision. The wash also protected the bricks and the mortar joints from weathering.
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