Ivy removal: 100 year old house and painted brick

Alright. So I'm a do-it-yourselfer with a lot of projects under my belt (including some fairly involved remodels), but none of my previous experience has prepared me for this demon plant from the pit of hell.

So, it's a really old farmhouse. Well north of 100 years. The brick has been painted and then ivy was allowed to crawl all over it. Now I need to remove and repaint. Started by yanking off the ivy in a section and then hitting it with a stiff scrub brush and soap as a test. LOL is what the ivy did in my direction.

Tried a small torch followed by scrubbing and that did seem to work, but given the amount I have to remove on 3 sides of the house (see pics below) that will take an amount of time I'm not prepared to commit.

Has anyone had to deal with something similar? I've thought about a larger torch (but that scares me a little bit given that this is basically a dried out tinderbox I'm working on) and I've wondered about using a souped up power washer (but then I'm afraid of hurting this ancient brick).

Definitely not going for perfection here...just something that can look passable a few feet back would do the trick. Any thoughts would be GREATLY appreciated. Everything I've seen so far seems to be ivy removal over non-painted brick.