WE GOT A NEW HOUSE!
Not literally, but it feels like it because we painted the house this weekend!!!! This was one of the first things we wanted to do when we bought the house but we had other priorities to make it liveable before we did exterior work.
I had said a while ago that it would be amazing to have it painted before our wedding but I didn't really think about that too much since we obviously had other competing priorities. Honestly, I thought we'd stop doing anything house-related for a while after the stress of the summer renovation and move-in process. BUT we seem to be really motivated now and I was so pleasantly surprised when David mentioned a week ago that he would be interested in painting it this weekend.
THE ORIGINAL COLOR
When I first drove by the house to see if we were interested in it, my first thought at the color was "YUCK." The listing photos did a great job of hiding the real color.
see, it doesn't look that bad at all in the listing photos!
but that was a lie.
in reality, it looks like a fairly neutral light brown in the shade, but reads like a yellow/brown bright vomit color in the sun. Since it is south-facing, there is a lot of direct sunlight hitting it throughout the day. We both knew it had to go.
PICKING A NEW COLOR
This is where my job comes in. Picking paint colors has become a full-time job for me. I love different colors in rooms and have been very thoroughly researching colors for each specific surface that we paint. The exterior was a bit tricky. We had to work with this warm roof color and I did not want to deal with painting the vinyl so the recommendation we received was to match the brick to the vinyl aka paint it white. I had originally wanted to paint it sage green but had a hard time picking a green that looked good without blending into the greenery around the house. I also went through about five different white swatches on the house (though I had even more paint samples that I just never even put up).
We had lil paint swatches on the front for a long long while
You can't really tell if the vinyl and brick would match in the front but the side is where it becomes obvious as it's the only part where the two meet. We chose White Dove by Benjamin Moore (the color furthest to the right). It was creamy enough to not be stark but still neutrally white. It has a gray undertone which makes it look less yellow.
Next, I had to choose an actual paint formula. I decided on a low lustre sheen over flat. Between the various options, we chose the Benjamin Moore Regal Select Exterior formula.
THE PROCESS
We rented a medium sprayer from Home Depot. A one-day rental is only $99. I only made the reservation about 5 days out from the weekend.
Then came the real work. The actual painting took about six hours for two coats with a break in between for drying. The actual work is about a full day and a half of prep work David did to clean everything. He took down every gutter, thoroughly cleaned them all, and power-washed the entire surface. It was tedious but it made such a difference. The biggest transformation that we could see was the windows. He took down every storm window and cleaned the original windows that had clearly not been touched in decades. Seeing the dirty windows was one of my least favorite parts of the house but it was a process to remove the storm windows. I am so happy to see them clean now.
It took about 8 gallons of paint total.
The big ol paint sprayer!
THE TRANSFORMATION
An action shot of the first coat!
AFTER
You can see here that they are slightly different colored white but I'm not upset with that. I didn't want it to be as stark white as it would have been should they match exactly.
And here she is!
Our cute little house is now white! She's a perfect backdrop and we are excited for all of the landscaping and other touches to transform her even more.
The next decisions to make are shutter colors and front door colors! Stay tuned for more.