Limewash Painting

I know that Carol and I have had conversations about limewash painting in the past. There is some information out there about this technique that we've read like Yucatanliving.com and some other sites. There is a faux technique but we are more interested in the simple and traditional limewash finish. I would love to know if anyone else, our contractors included, have used this application. Mark was playing around testing this with cinder blocks and hydrated lime. He bought a 40 lb. bag for $4. He mixed a small amount with water (equaling a 1/2 gallon) with to the consistency of buttermilk and applied it. It dried quickly even in this cool climate we've been having. The next day he thinned it down to the consistency of whole milk and reapplied another coat. It looks really good! We have a test block outside in the rain now to see how it weathers. It's a brilliant white and you can purchase pigmented powders in many colors, so that's our next test. We're impressed with how simple and inexpensive this is to do and will keep you posted on how it goes.

Good luck guys !! I hope it works because it will save you a lot of money if it does. We just got back from painting ours (at least part of it). We have to remortgage our house back home to afford the rest on account of how much paint we used. (just kidding, but it did take more paint than we expected.) We learned after the first room that you need to water the paint down because the walls are so rough and it drys so quickly in the heat. We added about 1 and 1/2 cups of water per gallon. That helped a lot. Also, if your thinking of using white on the walls - you might want to think again. On the colored walls, we got away with one coat but on the white walls we had to do 2 coats and in areas it was boarder line needing a third when we stood back and looked at it. The Home depot paint seemed better than the comax paint too.