House Painting- Before & After

The painting of the exterior of the house has been completed!  They took about 2 weeks- we were really lucky with dry weather!

Here are the before & after pictures!

FRONT- BEFORE

FRONT- AFTER

BACK- BEFORE

BACK- AFTER

SIDE- BEFORE

SIDE- AFTER

SIDE_ AFTER

SIDE- BEFORE

I'm so glad that we went with the brighter red!  When I look back at photos of the original red we had selected, it looks much too pink!

I like this angle, and how the old & new sections look blended, now that the painting is complete!

The paint we used was Benjamin Moore.

House colors:

Body-Hale Navy

Trim- Smoke Embers

Accent- Heritage Red

Threshold boards- Platinum Gray

Related Posts:

Scraping

Fixing siding

Primer

Body of House

Accents & Trim

A few detail shots:

Back Porch ceiling, new light fixture, bell.

I love how crisp the trim work is!

Old brass oil lamp through the window

Accents on the Exterior

The accent & trim painting has begun!

The trim has just been started- it will be a light gray.  It's looking pretty funky in the photo above, next to the cream color areas that haven't been painted over yet!

It's also strange how the gray looks almost tan under the shade of the front porch.  It's just a matter of how the light hits it!


The accent color has gotten one coat, however we think it looks too pink.  It almost matches the old color of the front door- which I always thought was too pink as well!   Red is a tricky color to get right!

So accent work has been stopped and the painter picked up some new samples for us to look at.  He was very nice about it and said now is the time to change it!

We were thinking of doing the side basement door the red, but I think it might be better in gray... We'll see.  The painter said he can change that to the new red once we pick it, if we want.

It's amazing how quickly they work!  It would have taken us all summer to accomplish what they have done in one week, so far!

The painter estimates he'll be done with the house & well house early next week.

The garage will depend on when the carpenter finishes up.

House Painting has Begun!

It was exciting to see the new color starting to go up on the house!

The trim and accent colors aren't up yet.. they just got the body of the house done on the front and both sides.  The back & extension haven't been started on yet.  I can't wait to see that & how the old & new sections of the house finally tie together!

If you look closely, you can see the front porch ceiling is now finished with the primer & two coats of paint.  We LOVE how that came out.

Another thing that got done was trimming the lilac bush that's on the front corner of the house.  The photo above shows it with the trimming complete.   It had to be done to allow the painters easy access to the porch railings.

Priming the House

With the scraping and carpentry done on the house, the painters sanded and then power washed the house.  The next day we came home to spots of a new blue!

Anywhere that the wood was exposed from the scraping & sanding, got covered with an oil based primer.  

They also primed the porch ceiling.  This hadn't been painted at all, as you can see in this post.  We went with a traditional light blue for this.

The primer on the house looked like a Wedgwood blue- but the painter said it's just about 60% the saturation that the final color will be.

The siding on the new extension was built with boards that were already primed.

They've been spending some time back there caulking though.

The well house got primed too, although there's still some carpentry work that needs to be completed, so they are going to hold off on the actual painting on that building.  

As mentioned yesterday, the garage still needs quite a bit more carpentry work on the back, so they aren't doing any priming on that yet.

Next up- the paint color will be revealed!

Siding Fixes

The scraped house was looking pretty rough!  The scraping continued on Saturday of Labor Day weekend, and on Monday we had a carpenter here to fix some boards that were cracked, sliding down, etc.  He was here for 4 hours and got the house done, and a little work done on the garage.

The white boards (on the old part of the house) are the ones that needed to be replaced...

6 boards on the driveway side

The road side of the house needed some more boards replaced because of the patch that we needed where the old kitchen stove was vented.  You can see the block of three boards next to the window below... and then there were four more boards in addition to that.

Happily, the front of the house didn't need ANY boards replaced, nor did any of the "old" part of the back of the house.

The garage needed four small boards on the front, where we installed the light fixtures (come to think of it, I don't think that I ever posted that the electrician finished that up!  Will have to fill that in later!)

The back of this garage needs a lot more work because of the amount of sun that it gets.  I think he said about 6 boards along the bottom will need replacement, plus the back window frames need additional work.  He was going to get additional supplies from the local lumberyard.

We're really pleased with the work this carpenter has done so far!  He showed up promptly at 8:00, as he said he would, and he got all of the above work done by Noon.  We'll be keeping his number handy for future projects! 

Scraping it down

August was the tentative start date for the exterior house painting.  I was thrilled when this stack of ladders showed up last week!

The next day, the scraping started. The sides of the house were worse than the front & back...

They started on the garage: 

And also started scraping the well house:

The biggest change is the shutters came down.

The shutters are purely decorative, plastic, and we definitely aren't putting these back up.

We are going to see how the house looks without shutters once the painting is done.

If we decide we want/need shutters, we'll get them made so that they are real, functioning,  properly sized, and historically accurate.  

Here's a before photo, with the fake shutters in place:

And here's with the shutters removed:

We've still got a couple of days of scraping, sanding, and power washing.  Plus the carpenter will be here on Tuesday to make some minor repairs on the well house where we removed some old lighting fixtures & the garage where a few clapboards are loose & a window needs fixing.  

The painter said it will be about two weeks total (that was before the hurricane was forecast... so we'll see how the weather goes!)