Exterior Painting

We have been toying with the idea of painting the house for a while now. Almost all of the houses on our side of the street have a similar brown or tan or beige color and I really didn't love the shade of ours. Add to that an outdated-looking green roof, of which I am not a big fan. So when the roof started leaking this spring and summer and fall (it's been a real treat, trust me), we decided to replace the roof (I say that like we had a choice).

Once we realized we didn't have to stick to green for the roof, we could easily change the color of the house altogether. Things are happening pretty fast. The painters actually have a bigger deadline since it needs to be above a certain temperature to paint, but the roofers (they say) can work at any temperature. So the paint is happening now, and the roof is hopefully happening next week. I am posting the pictures hopefully daily as the progress continues.

Day 1 - prior to any work starting (except the powerwashing). We'll call this the 'Before' picture. Sorry for the wide variety of colors that are showing up, I'm taking these with my iphone in all different lights.


Morning of day 2 - paint has been stripped/sanded off the wood on the porch and the front of the house (the former sunporch, currently my office). This foggy morning photo probably best shows the true color of the house before.


Afternoon of day 2 - trim is primed to go from green to white. Big difference already! Downspouts removed, gutters painted white.


Evening of day 2 - trim has been primed white, I decided to have them paint the wood on the front of the house white also. Ralph and I are still debating over whether or not this will stay white. He is usually pretty good with trusting me when it comes to color and design, but I don't think he'll be convinced until the front of the house is primed gray.


Side view of house with primed white trim, and the edging has begun with the gray primer.


Closeup of the first coat of tinted primer and primed window trim:


End of day 3 - whole front of house primed, both sides of house primed. Still not sure about the wood on the front of the house staying white. Ralph is lobbying for gray. I'm still thinking. For the record, this is the absolutely ugliest I think our house has ever looked. The people driving by must think we are insane. It looks so awful right now. Hideous. Ralph and I joked about putting a sign in our lawn saying "We know the green roof looks hideous! We're changing it to black next week!" I'm really really looking forward to seeing the finished product. Because while I'm pretty good with envisioning the final, well, vision, right now it looks pretty bad:

Here it is a few days later. Ralph convinced me to paint the front gray, and he made the right call. The trim is all done being painted white. The only major thing left (besides of course the new roof) is to have the porch painted. We need to do some major maintenance (including pulling down the ceiling and retexturing the wall) before that can be primed and painted. The also need to paint/stain the floor and the door.

Here is one of the side elevations so you can see what it will look like when you can't see the hideous green roof.

They started on the new paint today. They finished the front of the house but I wasn't able to get a picture of it yet. Here is it witht he front of my office painted, and the bottom wall trimmed out:

It's somehow subtle and massive all at the same time.

And a before picture of the detached garage, also getting a new paint job and a new roof.


Day 2 progress of the garage, trim primed:

Garage on day five(ish). Somewhere under all of that mess below the left window is a poor little hydrangea bush that is having a really tough time at trying to survive. And one of my sweet little boxwoods out front was snapped in half by the painters. :(



So at some point we realized we hated the color. Ralph questioned the color from the very beginning. I thought the green roof might be tricking our eyes into thinking the paint looked too blueish, but I was willing to give it a chance. And then I just wasn't. I texted Ralph a day or two ago with something along the lines of "I officially hate the color." This morning was the final nail in the coffin. I said hello to my neighbor and told her jokingly, "Don't worry, we're not keeping the green roof!" and she turned around and looked at the house (for the first time I guess) and said, "Oh, wow, you painted your house blue!" This afternoon, Ralph and I picked up some paint samples and painted a few shades on a small area on the back of the house. We selected a new color that is very similar in shade/brightness, but is without any hint of blue. It's a more silvery gray. Here is the photo Ralph took of the new color painted on top of the old color. this is very very close to what it looks like in person:



The next post will (hopefully) be an update with the house totally painted with the more silvery shade, or with the new roof going on.