How To Build An Interior Fake Brick Wall
Raise your hand if you wouldn’t love to replace your plain drywall with a beautiful imitation or real brick wall!
The choice for drywall for interior walls is clearly not based on visual appeal but an economical “shortcut”. It’s up to the homeowner or business manager to create an upgrade.
One of the most beautiful, therefore very popular, is the look of an antique faux brick wall.
Another look we see often is the reclaimed or Chicago style brick. This looks like a distressed material, which has gone through the beautification caused by time and various remodeling phases.
Brick doesn’t naturally look like that unless you purchase already distressed brick faux or real and in the form of panels or single brick.
If you decided to give that much-needed facelift to your wall, you can create a fake brick wall in different ways. You either use full or thin brick and embark on the laborious process of installing and maintaining them or use a simpler method. For obvious reasons, we will show you here how to install the panels of fake brick.
In some cases you will have the wall without the drywall on it – and that’s a big saving already since brick paneling doesn’t require drywall – or a finished wall.
The beauty of these tiles of pre-made brick is that they install virtually on any substrate. In the case of bare wood studs, all it’s needed is the lining up of the joints between two panels on top of the studs. Because in most cases these sheets are not at 12 or 16-inch center-stud you may have to add a few more here and there. To view a diagram and measurements of one of these panels you may click HERE. You will most likely have at least one stud fall behind the middle of a panel, and that’s a good thing.
Once the work is done nobody will know if you have drywall or not behind your faux brick wall.
Now let’s see how you can install the faux brick on a drywall surface and more general details on installation.
In most cases, the starting point will need a straight vertical edge. For this reason, you will need to cut the protruding bricks on the left side.
All you do now is apply some construction adhesive in the back of the sheet and apply screws, nails or long staples.
Once you have completed the first line of tiles you will need to start the second one and the rest of them, until you have reached the ceiling. A great idea would be to start the odd rows with half panels so that the joints between them will not line up and create a more natural look.
In some cases, you would want to wrap around a corner with the same material. This is another advantage of using panels. All you do is cut the panel at 45 degrees where it reaches the corner and then cut the other half at 45 again to match the left piece. This way you can avoid buying corner pieces, which are usually available.
When you are done with the panel you may need to use some caulking and the paint kit to hide some small gaps but that is usually all!
We always suggest running some numbers between the cost of labor to use heavy brick and panels.
Question:
Can these imitation brick paneling be installed directly on the framing? I’m trying to avoid installing drywall or plywood.
Hello.
Yes, most definitely.
You may use construction adhesive and screws/nails to install the faux brick panels directly on the framing.
In THIS page you will see how the installation instructions.
Please let us know if you have further questions.
Thank you for your inquiry!