Exposed Brick Walls With Picture Rail

Our bedroom renovation has been a long process, and in fact, this final part of the remodel has taken us almost 13 years to complete! It was well worth the wait, though, and we love our new exposed brick walls and picture rail.

I’m so happy to be able to share our new exposed brick walls with you today, as well as the clever picture rails we added. This project marks the final part of our bedroom renovation, which has taken us, in bits and pieces, about 13 years to complete. We’ve gutted and renovated the ensuite, taken a creepy hallway and made it into a storage-filled mudroom, and brightened up the whole space with so many different clever home decoration ideas. Our primary bedroom is actually the newest addition to our house, done about 40 years ago, and it sits as a little wing off the side of the house. Since this room is on the exterior of the original footprint of the house, we were able to remove one of the walls and reveal the original exterior brick wall from when our home was initially built in the year 1900 or so. Here’s a look at our latest little home improvement project.

Where We Started

Ripping the paneling off this wall and sealing up the corners between the original exterior wall and the new addition was actually one of the first things we did when we moved into this house over 13 years ago. It was quite drafty in a lot of areas of our old house, as you can imagine, and we’ve slowly made it cozier and better insulated over time as we’ve moved through with renovating different areas. I don’t have any photos of the wall from that time, but here’s a look at how the room looked just after we moved in.

Had there been plaster walls in this newest part of the house, the process of exposing the interior brick wall would have been a bit messier and more complicated, so we really got lucky with the existing masonry in this house being covered in these ’70s basement style wall panels.

Since then, doors have been moved and removed, drywall and millwork have been added, and really, almost nothing in the room is the same as it was. You can see more of this room in this post: Recent Room Updates Around Our Old House

Interior design ideas for challenging old houses: How to Update a Drop Ceiling Quickly and Easily

How We Finished the Exposed Brick Walls

The brick wall itself is beautiful, and we really didn’t need to change a thing with that part of the project. We have exposed brick in our main entry mudroom as well as around our kitchen doorway, and this continues the theme quite nicely and allows the character of our old farmhouse to really shine through in various spaces around our home.

With the way the addition was done on our home, there was a lot of insulation, construction-grade lumber, and strapping that was exposed when we first took the paneling off the walls, so we needed to remove the strapping that was holding the wall panels and hide everything else. We created a finished border to frame out the exposed brick portions of the walls while simultaneously covering all the unsightly lumber.

After adding spray foam, insulation, sheathing, and moisture barriers where they were needed, we trimmed out the corners, at the ceiling, and around the doorway. We added the same tall baseboards we have elsewhere around the house as well to finish things off.

We’ve added a lot of millwork to this room over the years, and the more refined soft white trim and moldings contrast nicely with the rustic brick. It’s an effect that feels just right for our traditional farmhouse and rural setting. Sometimes, when antique brick is used for a textured backsplash, brick fireplace, brick accent wall, or tumbled stone wall, you’ll see a sealant applied to give the brick a more finished look. We have not felt the need to do that at all in our home so far, although if we had a lot of exposed brickwork in the kitchen, I think I would definitely use a sealer.

Easy home decor idea for your walls: DIY Plate Rack With Ikea Ledges

Adding a Picture Rail Feature

Since the trim work around the brick walls needed to be so deep, Chris had the idea to add a little shelf between the two sides of each wall. It’s really more of a little ledge and just the right size for me to display a few framed photos or paintings.

We placed the picture rail at 60″ high on centre, which is a typical height for something like a traditional plate rail that you might see running around the perimeter of a dining room. So, even though this is a bit of an inventive idea, it still feels traditional and just right for our old house.

The picture ledge is anchored into the millwork on either side of the wall and directly into the brick in the middle of each shelf as well.

Will I switch out the art displayed here for every season? Probably not, mainly because I’m pretty attached to my little collection of vintage group photos that I’ve put together here, but I definitely could. I love that this acts as a decorative gallery system for displaying wall art without the need for hanging hardware, nails, or picture hanging strips. The shelf is quite shallow, though, so I just need to be sure that the framing on any prints I use to decorate this wall is quite thin.

It’s so nice to be able to look around the room now and see continuously finished spaces from all angles.

More farmhouse-style renovation inspiration: Beautiful Pine Flooring Using Basic Tongue and Groove Boards

Creating a Brick Feature Wall in Your Home

If you love the warmth of weathered, distressed, old-world reclaimed brick and would like to bring a similar aesthetic to your home, there are quite a few really good options.

If you live in an old house featuring real brick construction, you probably have a few areas in your home where you can expose a red brick wall pretty easily. The best walls to expose are actually former exterior walls because they probably won’t have any plaster or insulation covering them once you remove the drywall or paneling. As any home inspector will tell you, masonry construction can be sturdy and great for heat retention, but it can lead to some barriers when remodeling because every wall is a load-bearing wall and also every wall isn’t. Basically, removing walls isn’t really recommended, so being able to expose them and enjoy their original beauty and charm is a great consolation.

Sometimes, old houses are actually built using wood construction and brick facades to make them look like brick construction. This brick veneer exterior treatment is also very common with newer brick houses. The brick on these dwellings is often a thin brick or simulated brick tiles on the outside face of the home only. For this reason, it’s not possible to expose an interior brick wall, but if you have an addition that was built outside of the original brick exterior finish, you might be able to expose an older wall in the new addition.

A faux brick wall finish, applied over existing drywall or a plywood back to an interior wall surface, can be a great decorating idea if exposing a wall isn’t an option at all. Brick tiles are often used, but faux brick wall panels are also available and can be a quick, tidy solution. Brick wallpaper is also available, but doesn’t replicate the true texture and depth of brick and only adds the image of a brick wall onto an existing wall.

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Would you ever expose an original brick wall in your old house?