Considering that the mums on our back porch have died off after a series of frosts and we’ve had our first few snow storms, we’ve officially thrown in the towel paintbrush on exterior house painting. We called it quits in late September when the temps dipped too low for painting.
We’re a little disappointed in ourselves that we didn’t reach our goal of painting the entire house exterior, but then we think about what we DID accomplish. We scraped, we repaired clapboards and we CRUSHED nine gallons of paint and finished off the entire back of the house, the living room end, most of the front patio area, and all of the corresponding windows and doors. Although, on the gorgeous summer days we hitched up the boat and went fishing instead of painting. The things that matter.
The last section of siding we tackled was the area above the kitchen, which was one of the most damaged and in need of paint sections of the house. If we were to just paint one section of the house this summer, this section was the one to do.
The paint was flaking off across the entire section thanks to rain splash back from the kitchen roof.
And many of the boards were broken or completely coming off of the house.
If winter wasn’t looming, we likely would have spent more time up here repairing the siding. Replacing some of the damaged boards, replacing the old flashing, excessively caulking, etc. But alas, time was not a luxury we had. So nailing the boards back onto the house, painting the snot out of the boards, and caulking what we could would have to do until spring. And bless the air compressor and nail gun! It made siding repair go so much quicker than the good ol’ standby of a hammer and nails.
After we finished painting that upper section of the house, we were quite happy with the armor-like protection the paint provided (Benjamin Moore exterior paint…super high-quality stuff) and figured the paint job should be enough for a while.
It was such a gorgeous day when I was taking pictures of our painting progress that I couldn’t resist getting a shot from the top of the hill. The sky was so pretty you didn’t even notice our two-toned house.
So now we’re two sides down and two more to go but alas they shall wait until springtime. At least next summer we can get an early start on house painting, unlike this year’s June start after our early summer closing date. Until then, we’ve got a ridiculous amount of interior house painting work to do.
I can’t deny that I’m quite excited to be working inside the house. When we bought our new home in June, we vowed to spend every gorgeous day this summer outside, cleaning up the gardens, painting the house, and soaking up the sun. I’m happy to report that we were successful in sticking to that goal. But do you know how hard it is to only paint/organize/decorate inside the house on rainy days? So hard! But now we’re cruising along inside getting our home ready for the family Thanksgiving which we’re oh-so-excited to be hosting. So many things to update you on (like kitchen island building…swoon!) so stay tuned.
