Painting outside wall in back yard

[Jellylorum]

Has anyone ever done this before? Mine is a wall in a terraced back yard, currently painted cream, which is crumbling and needs brightening up. Just wondered how best to prepare the wall, and what sort of paint would give the best result?

I have, though it was straight onto the brick. Well worth it, as it really livened up to whole back if the house.

Prep much like any painting. You must start with a clean, sound surface. Is the wall crumbling, or just the old paint? If the former, you're probably going to need to repoint at the very least. Otherwise, start by removing flaking paint with a wire brush. Then sand it to smooth and provide a key (for an outside wall, i'd use a belt sander). Wash down with detergent or sugar soap, and you're ready to paint.

You want proper exterior masonry paint. Most companies do a reduced range of colours, so if you're after something unusual, you might have to fork out for a mixed to order thing, or Farrow and Ball.

If you can lay yopur hands on a power jet washer, it will take any loose or crumbly material off. You will probably need to repoint afterwards, but that's OK, if the old mortar was that poor, it's time to replace it.

Apply at least one mist coat, where the paint is diluted with water and applied with a large brush, it will soak in and disappear. Once you have killed the suction and the wall no longer sucks the paint off your brush, you can apply unthinned.

If you have never done it before, you will understand what I mean once you do it.

We've done it just as PigletJohn describes and it was hard work and did require quite a bit of repointing but it was worth it as it looked very smart and bounced light back into the back yard.

We painted the wall of our humungous garage which goes down three-quarters of our back garden, so it might as well be a feature. Well worth doing, though ours was roughly-rendered breeze-blocks and didn't need re-pointing.

If you google Majorelle gardens you'll see exactly the shade of deep blue we chose.

Thanks - sounds like quite a job! Might need re-pointing (I guess I'll need a builder to do that...), but will try prepping the wall first and see how it looks.

We did our repointing ourselves. It wasn't hard just time consuming.

How did you do it wonkylegs? Was it a brick wall?

It was a brick wall.
There is a guide on how to do it here - quicker than me telling you & it has pictures.
Do a small bit at a time, you can always mix up more mortar.
If you are painting the wall it's easier as you don't need to match the colour of the mortar. you can buy ready mixed mortar like this