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!

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