Cleaning paint off brick & mortar?

[Swervin_Mervin]

Anyone know of any products that will do a decent job of getting paint off brickwork?

Previous owners built a crappy porch and we want to take it down. The only trouble is they painted the entire inside white, which means that some of the facing brickwork of the house itself has been painted.

I tried a test patch on the porch side, using standard retail Nitromors and it did naff all other than make a small patch a bit lighter. Conscious that retail products are often inferior to trade and so wondered if there's anything out there that would do the job, without ruining the face of the brick?

[Swervin_Mervin]

Found this at lunchtime:

http://www.stripperspaintremovers.com/basic_princi...

Think I might give them a try, especially as they do trial pots.

The house was re-skinned when it was extended and so it's all relatively new brick which is smooth faced. As such it needs to be a "light" treatment.

[Swervin_Mervin]

I've got some toxic and corrosive chemicals that have turned up today. Solvistrip and another product.

Will give it a whirl at the weekend, but the solvistrip seems to get good reviews.

[Swervin_Mervin]

Drogo said:

"Toxic and corrosive" that's the way to go.

It cheered me up when I saw those nasty orange symbols on the product and a safety sheet listing the contents of each

[Swervin_Mervin]

Not bad as it was only on an hour. Underlying brick face nicely unaffected. The Nitromors effort is in the bottom right and that was on sever hours.

[Swervin_Mervin]

Eesh, wouldn't fancy that! Thankfully the previous owners reskinned the house so it's nice smooth brick.

I did wonder about the hot water pressure washer as even just using a scrubbing brush on that one brick was more difficult than I envisaged.