Hi dinkidi4, I'm dealing with the same thing right now. I did paint some of the walls white, which have been good for the time I've been here before doing the 'real' job, however, I don't want this really textured look from the bricks as there are too many walls. I'm about to try Dulux Acra tex on a wall to see if it gives a smoother bagged finish. So still showing the brick lines but not so rough. I'll show photos of the original bricks. Dark, very textured with lots of holes and missing bits of brick as well as deep grout grooves. Such a hard decision - cost and I don't want to make it a flat boring plasterboard house. I have extremely high cathedral ceilings so not a cheap job to plaster either. Excuse the white box - I was playing with it to look at removing arches. Any thing else you've found out since would be a great help

Great kitchen hashleigh. Your kitchen is a workhorse room, it is all about you, how you use it, what you need, functional and attractive so you enjoy being there, but not "pretty". Keep what you need in the room because you need it to be functional. Your brick is a feature of the room, it is a lovely brick, so if you like it keep it. Painting it can be a lot of upkeep. I don't know what is involved with whitewashing or what the upkeep is but do look into that aspect before making any decision. Looking at the rest of the space, the brick does only look a small part of it, it breaks up the timber on the other walls in a natural way. Looking at the whole of the area too, I do note you have a lot of really beautiful timber with furniture and fittings in the adjoining room and the ceilings. Everything is so cohesive, I'm wondering if even painting the timber is the right thing to do. I would certainly never paint the window frames or the door for example when everything else through the whole house is stained. Looking at the other photos you have posted now, the only thing I would be confident about changing are the splashback tiles - maybe that is a place to put some vibrant colour to change the whole effect of the room. A painted glass spashback in a brighter shade of the bluish tones in the brick could really add some life to the room, and the glass will not add another texture, it will more add some bling. I think you actually need to be in your home to really get a feel for everything and for this reason, I would call some interior designers to give you professional opinions before you do anything with the cupboards. Someone mentioned above about giving them a scrub - I have timber panelling and about every 5 years I use steel wool to rub oil into the grain to protect the timber and give it a whole new lease of life. It really makes a difference.

Well, I did a trial with a few tiles and then covered them with polyurethane. The trial didn't necessarily go entirely to plan but I was able to establish that PU will be too soft. Epoxy is likely to yellow even indoors, so that leaves me with the following solution: 1. make the tiles thicker (not a big deal) use tile selection and a thicker tile bed to enable a relatively flat surface to be made 3. seal it with a thin polyurethane to protect from mess Thanks for the contributions.

I like the bricks in the fence and you don't want to paint or render this, as you would be providing a lovely, fresh canvas for graffiti 'artists' to scribble on your walls. However, you could create a border area just in front of the fence and plant some shrubs or narrow trees. (Just saw a segment on Catalyst on the ABC the other day on types of trees which help to filter out pollution from your home. Silver birch trees seemed to do well, whilst taking up very little space and being quite sparse.) Even a border of mondo grass would be good, though this is very short in height.