Exterior House Remodel

After waiting and waiting for the Spring rains to end, Nate and I were finally able to have the exterior of our house repainted. When we bought the house in 2010 Nate noticed that a good portion of the fascia boards were beginning to rot, and that the paint on the house was so thin that he was worried that the actual house itself would start showing weather damage. However, we knew that the inside needed more help than the outside so that's where we started. After redoing the inside of the house and thoroughly enjoying those updates we were just itching to get the outside looking as pretty as the inside (okay, I was itching for that...Nate was itching to get everything sanded and repainted so he didn't have to worry about our house rotting down around us).

We were thrilled with the job that Chris from Color Effects did on the inside so we hired him for the outside work as well. Due to the rainy spring our painting date kept getting pushed back and back so when we finally did get the call that Chris could paint our house in three days, we were caught unprepared as we hadn't yet officially picked out our paint colors. No worries, though because I figured that I'd learned so much from my previous painting job (Baby's Room) that there would be no problem with this paint job. Boy, was I wrong! Nate and I picked the color of our house by actually driving past a house one day and both commenting on how much we liked the colors of the house. Nate stopped by and asked the owner for the name/number of the color of paint for the main part of the house and I figured we were done picking colors (as I knew I wanted true black and white as accent colors). So when Chris called saying he was really to paint that week I went to the paint store and picked up samples of each of the paint colors, brought them home and put up a small amount of paint on the house to confirm colors, and promptly forgot about checking on the colors after they'd dried. I noticed that the main house color looked a little green but figured that that green tinge would go away when the paint was dry. That evening when Nate came home I mentioned that I painted a sample of our paint colors and had already given the paint numbers to Chris who had called earlier in the day to confirm colors. Upon Nate going outside I knew I'd gotten myself into a mess when I heard "Um, honey? Have you checked on the paint colors since you painted them?" Uh oh.

I walked outside to view the nastiest color of baby poo green I'd ever seen! Obviously, the color number we were given by the homeowner was either a different color's number or a dyslexic moment. Either way this was NOT an acceptable color to paint on our house. A quick call to Chris worsened the situation as he'd already put in the order for our paint with the paint store. Eek! I then looked at the clock and realized that I only had 30 minutes to drive from our house to the paint store and pick out a new house color before the store closed. I had no choice, though, as Chris was set to come over to our house the following morning to begin the painting. So with a rush of wind I flew out the door and drove as fast as I could without getting a ticket like a responsible adult and obeyed all speed limit signs. I literally picked up every swatch of brown color that the paint store had, rejected all those I didn't like at first glance, and picked out three new paint samples from the only three colors I found acceptable. Upon arriving at home I painted some sample blocks and Nate and I picked out the color we both liked. The next morning I drove back to the paint store to see if they could turn my yuck green color into my new pretty brown color. The sales person was so cute as he looked at both colors and tried to find a polite way to tell me I was out of my mind if I thought I could turn A into B before telling me that it simply wasn't possible. :-) So I ordered another 8 gallons of paint in the needed color and got this paint mixed up just before the painters arrived to pick up the paint on their way to our house. Whew! Dodged that potentially nasty bullet!

I'm ever so pleased with how our new house colors turned out, but was once again reminded that I need to think, think, and think again when it comes to painting projects! I have a tendency to be to last-minute with these decisions and it ends up creating so much extra work. Hopefully, the third times the charm so that whenever this third painting project comes up I'm prepared and thorough and will have a much easier time of it. :-)

A view of the house before painting. Grey with white trim. Boring, boring, boring.

A little closer of a view.

My new house! I never seemed to be able to get outside at a time without shadows so  here's a picture of the color in the sun. Brown house with white and black trim. Notice the black front door? We decided to get a new front door that had a small window in it to help light up our front entry way (as it was pretty dark when compared to how light the rest of the house is).

Here may be a better view of the house with it's new colors even though it's a bit darker without the sun shining on it.

Here's a closer view of the house with the new door and flower box up.

Here's a closer view of the house minus the shadows/sunlight.  

Now we just need gutters on the outside (it's like running the gamut to get inside without having a huge waterfall run down your back every time it rains) and our exterior house remodeling project will be complete! Hopefully those will go up by the end of the month. Ahh, it's a great feeling to check off another project off our To Do list!