Red Stain / Paint on facing brickwork

[RDWRER]

Previous owner once painted or stained the facing bricks a deep red and the mortar a bright white.

It looks like a 1980s door-to-door salesman job as a few other properties have a similar stain. It looks awful but the original brick underneath is a more traditional orange colour judging by the rest of the street.

Any ideas as to what product they might have used and how to try and remove it?

I've tried various peel away products but it seems more like a stain than a paint? Grinding it with a wire brush improves it a little but not fully. Brick acid maybe?

Repointing could deal with the white perhaps but the red is a pain. Cheers

 

[sparkwright]

Sandblasting?

 

[nero44]

You could try to stain over it again if the area is not too large. I recently did this for my brick arch above my windows. The previous owners tried to whiten them and stopped half way.... I used brick tint from "Total Wall Care" and and mixed their burn orange with traditional red to get the desired look.

They also have mortar tint, but from your picture it looks like scraping and repointing will get a much better result.