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Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Painting the House Exterior - Finally

This post has been a long time coming.  It has pretty much been a year since we first began the big task of painting the exterior of our house.  It took us months and then I had little things here and there that I have been working on - and honestly I'm still working on.  But, I'm ready to share.  This has hands-down been our toughest and biggest task to date.  Painting your house exterior is no joke.  Its not necessarily hard (at least for a smaller one-level home like ours) just really, really time consuming.  I feel like I could share and share about this project.  This post is photo/word overload, just a warning.

Ok, so true story - I would not even go and look at this house while we were house shopping -just based on the exterior condition.  I hated it.  You can't tell from the photo below but there were lots of mis-matched paint touch ups all over the house.  It was so bad.  Weird thing though, after months of looking and a significant price drop we went and checked it out and loved it.  Our house is in an awesome location in the historic downtown area of our amazing town - which was huge for us and somehow we just immediately liked it when we got there.  So I guess you should never judge a book by its cover.  And if you really want, you can read my first ever post about that here.


Slowly but surely we have been working on the exterior. Getting the exterior painted was high up on our to-do list after we moved in.  We decided to do it ourselves to save some major cash.  Another true story - we actually paid for the majority of the paint with change that we had accumulated over time.  We didn't literally use the change, we cashed it out - but yes you can save your pennies and paint your house exterior.  We were pretty pumped about that.  


So paint color - we went with Valley Hills by Behr.  We used Behr Premium Exterior Paint.  This was a long, long process for me.  I flipped flopped and debated colors forever but ultimately this was and is the perfect color choice for us.  I simply love this gray/green shade.


Another debacle for us was what color to paint the foundation and also the concrete stoup.  We ended up going one color down on the color swatch and went with Painted Turtle by Behr.  I wasn't sure what kind of paint to use but the guys at Home Depot were great and pointed us in the right direction.  I have found that they seem to always have a really knowledgeable paint staff there - at least here they do.  


The shutters, trim, gutters (yes, you can paint them), railing and screen door were painted creamy natural by Behr.  We found it easy and best to remove the gutters (attached to the walls) to paint them.  Also, we painted the trim first - to me its easier to paint the trim and then cut in with the wall color after.  I don't know if that's how the pros do it or not - probably not, but it was the easiest and fastest way for me and it worked just fine.



I now love the cottage feel our house has.  The more we work on it and show it some love, the more we fall in love with it....hmmm that is just like our relationship with Christ.  The more we work towards a love-relationship with Jesus, spending time in His word and so on, the more we will fall in love with Him.



Oh, if you are wondering about the doors - we ended up painting them a dark purple color.  It was a Martha Stewart Living color that is no longer available.  Luckily we have enough left over for touch ups and such.  You can read all about painting our doors here.



In addition to the painting we also have done a ton of work in the landscaping department.  Although we still have more work to do just removing of the old gross plants was a big task and huge improvements.  We have planted a few things in the front but have plans for a lot more.  We ended up keeping one original plant and just relocated it right next to our front stoup.  I can't tell you how happy I am that those terrible palm tree things are gone.



We also have a new walkway - I despised the original one. Once again this walkway adds to the cottage-ness of the house.  At first I think I was feeling I wanted to just modernize our exterior like crazy but as we go, I kind of like the sweetness and vintage vibe this home has.  Restoring something and staying true to its style is kind of nice to me.



So as far as calculating the amount of paint we needed I just asked the paint guy at Home Depot and he helped us through.  We went on the sparse side because we didn't want to over-buy.  We did end up going back twice and picking up extra paint.  I was totally ok with that because we only bought what we needed.  We used, I would say mid-grade painting tools like rollers and brushes...yes, this was all by hand and no spray painter used.  From what I read the spray painters you can rent are nice and quick but you waste paint.  If our house was any bigger though we really would have considered that because this took forever!


Would I paint the exterior of a house again - absolutely.  Do I want to do that anytime soon---no way.  If you are considering painting your house think about how long you think it will take you and times that by 3 or maybe 4.  We even had tons of help- which we are super thankful for.  All in all, we totally love the new paint job - its doing a lot for this old little house.

Ok, I think I'm all blogged out for the day.  And I'm sure you are tired of hearing about painting.

So, I would love to know - has anyone ever painted their house exterior?  How did it go?  Would you do it again???  Share with me!


Linking Up Here:

30 Handmade Days Pity Party

18 comments:

  1. first off I love your final paint color! It is so rich and warm, now your house is so inviting :) I can just imagine all the love labor that was involved, Ive never painted the exterior of a house but have had to do my fair share of other house work. Great job!

    Kendra @ openspaces

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  2. Hi! I found you through Decor & the Dog's linky party and I LOVE your paint transformation!! Can I tell you how impressed I am that you did this yourselves? We attempted to paint our first house which had a similar outside and gave up after trying to sand/chip off the old paint and hired out. Kudos to you-- it looks amazing!

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    1. Thanks so much Lyndsay! I'll be honest - there were days I wanted to throw in the towel. We actually didn't have a whole lot of chipping and sanding to do before hand so that made it way better - I can understand how annoying that would have been! Thanks for stopping by!

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  3. Oh my goodness... this is stunning! I imagine that every time you pull up to your home, it makes you smile. We need to get our place painted in the next year or two and the idea of choosing colors completely freaks me out. You guys did such an amazing job! Moving from the light creams to the dark tones really breathes new life into the exterior. Well done!

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    1. Thanks so much Danielle! I can't tell you how much I love coming home and seeing this instead of the before! We still have work to do but its getting there! It took me months and months to choose a color. I was so nervous - its different than choosing a room color that can be easily changed. Just grab some paint samples, paint small sections and start comparing - thats how we made our choice.

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  4. What an awesome transformation! Love they way it looks!

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  5. This is so fab Megan. I need to steal your hubs to give us some landscaping pointers! I really love the colors. The dark purple door is the cherry on top too!

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    1. Thank you! I'm in love with the purple door. I'll send Justin over anytime :).

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  6. I'm tired just reading this! I LOVE that color. We knew when we built that we didn't want a boring tan or white house. I REALLY like your exterior! Good work team!

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  7. I love that color!! It's so pretty! :)

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  8. Most of the time, people are more focused on remodeling their interiors that they forgot about the exterior look of their house. You chose a very timeless color which is a very good choice for an exterior paint. When it comes to this type of project, I usually hire someone to do it to make sure that everything is polished. By the way, both the inside and the outside of your house look beautiful!

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  9. WOW... Looks great!

    I am looking into painting our exterior... we have a two-story split level house... the top is a chocolate brown wood siding and the bottom is a cream river-rock...

    I was hoping that I could get the front of the house done over Memorial Day weekend... I think that if we get the cleaning done the weekend before that the painting should be fairly straight forward... You didn't give much detail on how long it took you to physically paint the house... Our color decision is easy, match existing, lol...

    Wish Me Luck!
    laura.newsol(at)gmail.com

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  10. Hi, i love your color, would you please tell me what is the color name Please! Thank you so much,I'like to paint my home with this color?

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