How has it been a month (A MONTH!) since the last time we checked in? For shame. But alas, sometimes life gets in the way. This last month of life has been a roller coaster. From some really exciting things going on (more on that soon…really soon) to some absolutely sucky things (if you follow us on Instagram you know we had to say goodbye to our beloved furbaby Goose…#cancersucks). But today we wanted to share with you our biggest project completed this summer. We officially have an all-white colonial farmhouse.
If you go to the Angie’s Roost Pinterest account and look at the Country Home board, you’ll see a significant trend of white colonial farmhouses that look suspiciously like ours. This was 100% subconscious. So back to last summer when we were deciding on the paint color for the exterior, it was painstakingly clear that I would settle for nothing less than the white colonial farmhouse of my dreams. So we began scraping, repairing, and painting the clapboards of our home in Benjamin Moore’s White Dove.
It was a labor of love and a project we chipped away at on nights and weekends. As you can see in this close-up picture of our farmhouse, the clapboards were in definite need of a paint job. Our goal was to get two coats of paint on the entire house by the end of this summer. We didn’t quite make it, just the front and one side need a second coat, but at least we slapped on at least one coat of paint on the entire thing.
We tagged teamed the project as much as possible. Colby hit the high spots with the big ladders, I hit the lower spots with a stepladder, and Goose monitored the situation (and the passersby). I’m not allowed on tall ladders. Something about a gracelessness and a lack of balance.
Most of the painting was relatively easy, albeit a bit too high for my liking. But that didn’t stop Colby. He even wrangled some of the trickier, higher spaces like the above the patio. He built his own version of ladder staging by using a ladder bracket to attach a homemade staging plank to the ladder from the peak of the house. It was especially helpful since the shingles on the lower roof are old slate circa 1781 and can’t stand the pressure from walking on them. Thank goodness for Colby and his ladder-climbing/painting skills. You couldn’t pay me enough to get up there like that. I’m fairly certain that he’s missing the part of his brain that fears falling from big heights.
Some sides of the house, like this side adjacent to the field, were worse for wear. This side in particular had some strange gutter systems going on, most of which we removed to be dealt with/redirected next summer, and a ton of rotten boards. Thankfully we were left a slew of clapboards in one of the outbuildings, which we used to replace the worst boards. Many were salvageable with a few coats of plastic wood and caulking to help fill in the gaps, and covered with a thick coat of Benjamin Moore’s exterior paint (my favorite!).
So now we can officially say that we are the proud owners of a circa 1781, Vermont white colonial farmhouse. It makes my Pinterest dreams come true! Just wait until this Christmas until each and every one of those windows is sporting its very own Christmas wreath with a giant red bow. I just may have hoarded a ridiculous amount of Christmas wreaths in a post-Christmas sale last year just for this purpose. Hoarder problems. Thank goodness for a ginormous attic!
We still have so much work to do with the exterior of our white colonial farmhouse. Like coat #2 on the front and the field side. And either repairing or replacing the gutter systems. And the windows. We still plan to remove each window to scrape it down, re-glaze, paint, and pop it back in. It’s a huge project. But for now, we’re reveling at the views of our all-white colonial farmhouse.
The picture below is of the side of the house that still needs a second coat of paint. We have the paint gallons to do it, but kind of ran out of time when temps went from 80 degrees to 50 degrees almost overnight. It can wait until next summer. After tearing through 20+ gallons of exterior paint this summer, we’ve likely had enough.
It’s amazing how much cleaner, brighter, and cuter the white colonial farmhouse is these days compared to the house during its peeling blue paint days. I extra spruced the back stoop this summer and didn’t even have to crop the photos to keep the blue sections of the house at bay.
While I am a little sad that we didn’t 100% finish the project this summer, I am excited that we almost finished the whole thing. Coat two on the front will go swimmingly fast next summer. Then it’s on to phase two of our white colonial farmhouse makeover, landscaping! I have been dying to get my hands into the dirt and start landscaping around the house but have been waiting until after we painted. We started doing a little bit of yard work this year by starting to clean around the old field stone rock wall in front of the house.
One day Tara will shine again! So that concludes our big summer project of painting the exterior of our white colonial farmhouse. I know this is something we could have hired out, but it would have been mad expensive and we kind of enjoyed spending a few hours here and there working away at the project. We’re so happy with how the house turned out and can’t wait to landscape, decorate, and accessorize this exterior now that we have a clean, white base to work with.
