Tess, I hope I'm not too late with the following advice. Don't ever paint brick. Your house is a simple design, exterior wise. Paint wont fix it. What's missing is a designed garden. Even the simplest brick house can look like an inviting, lived in home when it has a structured garden surrounding it. For less than the price of paint, invest in a landscaper to design a garden that will soften and greatly enhance your homes street appeal ...and add many $ in value. Painted brick detracts from value and has to be repainted periodically, defeating the purpose of brick, which is, no maintenance. Besides, your house, painted white or cream as has been suggested here, would stand out in the street like a proverbial sore thumb. Trust me, landscape, starting at the street boundary and leave the bricks alone. Good luck.

When installing over top of old ceramic/porcelain be aware that you will most likely have to "sink" the old tiles in cement to do this. That means grinding down the tiles a little (rough up the surface) then the self leveling cement is poured and allowed to dry. The new floor is then laid over top. Vinyl is notorious for requiring EXTREMELY flat surface. A ceramic tile rarely has this requirement (grout lines and "high spots" around tile corners give problems). A glue in place tile is also going to have the same problems and the same solution = sinking the tiles in cement. This adds extra costs to the floor. A rigid floor like a cork floating floor can handle a bit more floor deflection than vinyl or laminate planks. If labour in your area is relatively cheap...you could probably have the tile removed and the sanding of the mortar done for the same price as coating in concrete. You will also have the luxury of being able to lay any floor you want once it is done AND you don't have to worry about increasing the floor height. It is possible to sink the ceramic in cement...but is it the most cost effective option? Maybe not.

those tiles from the 1800s are encaustic... the color goes all the way through. ceramic tiles are red in the middle and have just a relatively thin layer of color and glaze. porcelain tiles do have a color matched center (look at the edges to tell) but i'm not certain that all of the pattern goes through. at least it would wear off and turn the main color, not red.

Wellington , Palmerston North and other mid to lower north Island areas, we have some new 600 x 600 porcelain tiles just in, Terrazzo tiles is a highly popular and trending tile going into a number of new builds at the moment. Look at our price, find a cheaper tile, broadly advertised in the lower north and we will pay you. But does cheap mean cheap quality; simply, No. Look across in Australia what our neighbors are paying www.tfo.com.au, and you will see you can pay often half of what you are paying your current supplier. Compare our prices with your current supplier, www.tileoutletnz.co.nz . We would be delighted to cooperate with you on your next project.