Moving Along on the Exterior

In my post two months ago, I shared that we have desperately needed to repaint the house. I am happy to share that we decided on a color and we have started to move ahead with finishing the house and trim! The winner was Sherwin Williams Illusive Green. It was the first color that I was excited about, it is close to our existing color, and my gut told me to go with it, so we did! (Side note: Pete left the decision to me but he also really likes the color).

Before choosing a color, I ended up finding the shade that was previously used on the house. It was a bit dark for my liking (See the photo below; I tested it on the bottom row of siding). I also discovered that the house was stained with a solid stain, instead of painted. To keep this consistent, we are using Sherwin Williams Woodscapes Solid Stain. I am happy to report that it has been great so far, and I will update if we run into any big issues.

As prep, we used a wire scraper to brush off chipping wood, and then did a quick power wash (facing downward) to clean off the cedar shakes. In my research, I found that you do not want to overwork the cedar, which could compromise the wood and also affect the grain.

We started with staining the front of the garage. This is a smaller area, but big enough that it gave us a good idea of how the color would perform in the front of our house. This side of our house faces west and gets a lot of direct sunlight during the day and afternoon, so it looks the lightest on this side and the south side. We just used a paint brush and it took us maybe 30-45 minutes working together for each coat on the front of the garage.

While we were at it, I decided to spray paint this hanging lantern as a temporary update. I removed the yellow glass and hope to replace it soon, but with COVID I am avoiding stores as much as possible. This project only required a few minutes of preparation (taping plastic all around) and a few seconds of spraying 2-3 coats. I used Rustoleum Oil Rubbed Bronze.

A week later, we decided to tackle the front of the house. We realized quickly that we may need some help to get the upper half of the house, so we started with the lower half. We removed the shutters, prepped the shakes a few days in advance, allowing adequate time for them to dry after washing, and then taped thoroughly.

We considered bringing out our paint sprayer but we ended up doing a combination of brushing and rolling that worked really well. I used the brush along the trim, and under the overlay of the shake, and Pete rolled the rest. It went faster than expected, and I would estimate that it took around 1.5-2 hours for each coat of the front.

The current “after” is much better than I could have imagined. It feels so good to see things cleaning up! As you can tell, we still have a lot of work to do. We are debating hiring out the hard to reach places, or at least recruiting a few more people to help with the ladder and safety.