Exterior Painting

For a long time, I had three colors I was considering for the exterior of the house--medium gray, sage green, and medium taupe.  When I was driving around town I found a house similar to the style we're building (Cape Cod-ish) with an exterior color that I really liked.  I took a few pictures to show Gerry then we drove back to the house so he could see it in person.  We agreed it was a good color so I wrote the homeowners a note asking if they would share the brand and color of their house paint.  They called me!  I guess it's kind of a blue-green shade...more green than blue...and it looks different in different lighting throughout the day.  I painted 5 areas on walls facing different directions so I could see how it looked.  After a couple months (and Tech Trek duties), I finally had time to paint.

I started painting with flat paint and depending upon the lighting, it sometimes looked more blue-gray than green.  I also didn't really like the flat finish--it would be hard to clean and it was "flat"...duh...no dimension.  I didn't recall my inspiration house looking that way so I went back to check it out again.  That house's color looked much better than mine and it seemed to have a sheen that the flat paint did not have so I decided to try a satin finish.

 

Painting siding is a LOT of work!  All the white trim has to be cut in for every coat of paint.  I'm doing a minimum of three coats--one flat and 2 satin--on most of the walls and a fourth coat on the south and west facing walls that are exposed to the direct sun.

This is the east side of the shop. I started on the shop so I would get my "lessons learned" there instead of on the house.  

In this section, I cut in the edges as well as the bottom edge of each row before I painted the siding.

 

The shingles are also a hassle to paint.  I have to cut in the white trim, paint in between the shingles so the yellow primer of the board underneath does not show, and then paint the bottom edges.  Once that's all done. I paint the shingles themselves.  Repeat at least twice!

 

 Here's the bottom half of the wall and the shingles all painted!

Raymond helped me paint the sides of the house.  I cut in around the trim and he painted the "field."  This is the west side of the house:

 






















Gerry's brother, Butch, and his wife Liz visited for a few days so we had a dinner party in the shop