Tuesday, August 04, 2015

Where does the time go?

July seemed to pass in a blink this year...Both of our children celebrated birthdays in July...our daughter turned 25 and our son turned 21.  Pretty momentous birthdays.

In amongst the celebrating we began what is turning out to be the biggest project so far...painting the house.


It is a quaint little ranch home that was manufactured in the 1970's.  This is what it looked like last fall shortly after we moved in.  It is aluminium siding except for those white squares under each of the windows, which is just painted wood.

If you follow on Facebook, and you should, you saw that we chose Sherwin Williams paint, that we had colour matched to Behr's Mined Coal.  A great dark grey colour with just a touch of brown to it. We wanted something totally different than the white coloured siding that the house was given 45 years ago.


We took off the shutters, which were also aluminium and saved them for a possible future project. Then we washed the whole house with siding cleaner that McG found in the garage from when his sister owned the house.  We purchased a Wagner power sprayer for this project.  Knowing that this project was a huge undertaking, we figured that the cost was justified.  First he painted the soffits and eavestroughs with Sherwin Williams Extra White exterior semi-gloss.  The sprayer made this task remarkably easy. The taping of the windows and doors was the hardest part of this project.

Weather was an issue on several occasions and delayed our project with rain and days that were very humid.  We also took the time to "cut-in" around the house with two coats of the grey so that we minimized the chance of overspray onto the newly painted soffits.  I was able to help with this portion of the painting so it went pretty fast.


Then it seemed that we were stuck in limbo for a few days as the temperatures were hot and threatening rain.  We took the plunge last Friday night and McG started the spraying.  We chose to paint the whole house the same colour and not have the bottom portion a different colour like it was previously.


We purchased an exterior semi-gloss finish which we are hoping will help with durability. We were able to save some money because Lowe's had this particular brand of paint on sale, buy one gallon get one FREE!  We had never used Sherwin Williams paint before, but we are very impressed with this Showcase paint.  It has a built in primer and it sprayed on beautifully.




Because we both couldn't paint since there was only one sprayer, I was the runner and ladder mover.
The sprayer definitely made the job much easier, the hardest part of using it was cleaning it when we were done for the day.


Last weekend we painted the front and the driveway side of the house.


I was so excited to pull the plastic off the windows when it was done and to get my stuff back onto the porch and into the gardens when all was dry.


It made a huge transformation in the look of our home.  We had so many people stop to comment. We even had some people honk as they drove by. One little boy about eight years old was riding by on his bike and yelled out "Your house is looking good Mister!!" which made us both laugh.


Since we bought the house last year from McG's sister and her husband, we have been working to make the house feel like "ours".  This, to me, has accomplished that task.  Still to be done are painting the trim around the windows and adding an additional while vinyl trim around each of the windows.  Those sections under the windows that are wood are going to be getting an accent siding, once we can decide and agree on which one to use!


We LOVE that the porch just seems to POP off the dark grey colour and it shows so much more!

Here's a side-by-side look.  This new colour really puts a fresh and updated look on the house.


We still have to finish up painting the far side of the house and the back.  It may take a couple of weeks because we have some prep work and another project to finish up back there before we can proceed.  I will be sure and show those projects and the back of the house when we are done...STAY TUNED!!


Linking up @:

A Stroll Thru Life
Savvy Southern Style
Cozy Little House


4 comments:

  1. Great update Cheryl. I love the gray!

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  2. Great job updating your home. I love the gray color that you chose.

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  3. When my husband and I bought our first house, we actually painted it ourselves. And of course the weather turned unseasonably hot while we were in progress. We are too old now and have to pay someone to paint for us.

    The details of the house pop with the colors you chose. Good luck on finishing up those last steps.

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  4. WoW! What a beautiful transformation!
    I've come over from The Olde Barn.

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