The front of my rancher is brick faced and has alot of old paint splattered on it. It looks terrible. The brick is decorative(pitted) so I do not want to use a wire brush for obvious reasons. Which would be the best option:
1. Sandblast
2. spray paint remover and follow with a powerwash
If there are other ideas I would greatly appreciate to hear them.

Well, whenever some "youth at risk" tags the brick veneer on my building with a rattle can, I remove the paint by making up a 50/50 mixture of acetone and hydrochloric acid based toilet bowl cleaner.

Then I use a denture cleaning brush, like this one:

http://www.easycomforts.com/ea.../images/p336618b.jpg

To clean the tag off my property. The nylon bristles of the brush are stiff enough to break up the paint softened with acetone, but no strong enough to marr the surface of the brick.

Also, the idea here is that the acetone breaks up the paint, and that allows the acid to dissolve the top thousandth of an inch of brick or mortar which the paint is sticking to.

But, if it's too large an area to do by hand, my second choice would be sand blasting with a soft abrasive like ground up walnut shells. That would be aggressive enough to take off the paint, but not hard enough to cause any damage the brickwork.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Nestor,

Ya, I have a large area with a lot of paint splatter marks. I appreciate your help.

Sandblasting is the easiest way to go about it. Although Nestors way may not be appropriate for you since you've got a large area to deal with, it's quite creative I must say