Painting

The exterior of our house has needed painting ever since we moved into it seven years ago. However, it also needed a lot of other outside work. So, the first summer we put in sprinklers and a lawn, the next summer I wrote my MA thesis, the next summer Josh worked in Austria for a month and I put in flower beds and a garden, the next summer I had a new baby, the next summer we went to Spain, and last summer I was pregnant and not wanting to scrape what was likely lead paint. 

In the meantime, the paint continued peeling. 

So, this summer was it. Unfortunately, Josh was absolutely slammed with editing work this summer, so this was mainly my project. I started at the beginning of July and took the last piece of tape off on Halloween. And I still didn't finish: the eaves and cement at the bottom remain, in addition to "cutting" most of the house to make all the color transition lines straight. But I did glaze the windows in addition to scraping and painting everything.Our windows are original (and so nearly 100 years old). I know, I know, they're inefficient and everything else, but I love them and the details of their wooden frames. So I lovingly repaired all of the glazing (the stuff that holds the windows in the frames) that had fallen off over the years. I also tore off old screens and started replacing them (something else that will have to be finished next year.)

I knew all this was going to be a big project, but I did not see it taking four months. It's not surprising though since I couldn't scrape when the kids were asleep (it would wake them up) and, of course, it was also hard to do while they were awake. At the beginning of the project, I mostly worked on the weekends, but the last couple months or so, this was an everyday thing. A million thanks to my mom, who watched the kids so many afternoons and to friends and family--my dad, Josh's mom, Steve, Kristin, Kip, Scott, and Bill--who all helped. This was one summer when I was really glad our house is as small as it is! Anyway, I've never been more sick of anything in my life. But it was in the end very rewarding to see our house transformed.

This west and back sides of the house were the worst. This is after a  lot of  very time intensive scraping.

After scraping, I went over it with a steel brush, washed it, Josh caulked and puddied lot of it, primed it, and gave it a couple coats. 

Nico spent a lot of time in this seat this summer, eating tomatoes and bread and  watching me paint while I sang the itsy bitsy spider and patty cake with him. Poor guy.

Josh did a whole lot of puddy work to make boards and columns look more even.

I should have taken a picture of this before I started because in addition to the peeling paint, there were a million unnecessary cords from previous cable boxes, etc. that were unsecured and falling all over the back of the house. It felt so good to call the power, phone, and cable companies and get all of those removed. Why did I never do that before?!

We ended up going with a similar color to the original but a blue that was a little lighter and more vibrant. I like it a lot.

My ladder/tape collector.

We debated between painting the door red and gold. The gold won out, but I wasn't happy with the first color I got. I wanted it a little brighter.

We've had these new address numbers in our shed for probably  three or four years. Our address (ugly, old gold numbers) were above our porch. We wanted to move them onto the column, but the columns are hollow, which presented a problem since these numbers rely on deep holes drilled into the mounting surface. Josh used that expanding foam stuff though, which he shot into the columns after drilling the holes and it seemed to do the trick.

A much happier front porch (and house)!

Now on to the fence next year . . .