Well, I was a little MIA here last week. I promise that I thought about writing posts, but I just never found the time to sit down and actually do it. It’s not for a lack of desire, but more of a lack of time. I apologize for being off the grid a bit. But, we’ve been busy. I thought that summer break was supposed to be easy-breezy? Ha! With this house exterior painting project, the planning of an upcoming {epic} trip, and catching up around the house, my time has been full. Oh and have I mentioned that it’s baseball season? Yes, I crash in bed every single night. But, you aren’t reading this post to hear of my full to-do list. Get to the painting progress, right? Here it goes:
I first introduced you to our plan to paint the exterior of our home this spring and summer here. There were a lot of paint choice opinions flying around and we took them all to heart. We settled on getting samples for six colors and proceeded to paint swatches on the house. I went outside at many different hours of the day and in different weather conditions (except snow!). I came to some conclusions about the six colors from these observations. And in the end, I left the final decision up to the husband. Don’t worry, I was (and am) pleased with his choice.
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So, what were the six finalists?
1: Timber Town
2: Euro Gray
3: Shutter Gray
4: Charcoal
5: Chimney
6: Very Navy
All of these colors were fantastic. And I am sure that any of them would of been fine. But, we tried to be purposeful in thinking about the size and shape of our farmhouse, along with what color made us the most excited to do this project!
Are you ready for the final choice?
We chose: CHARCOAL! (#4!)
On the day before Memorial Day, I headed to The Home Depot to purchase the paint. We ended up going with the Behr Premium Plus Paint and Primer in One in the exterior flat. We chose this one based upon reviews that were then measured against our budget. To be honest, we have been tucking a little bit of money away here and there in order to make this purchase. I had enough to buy 10 gallons with the Home Depot’s Memorial Day rebate program. So that means we have $100 coming back to us. Woohoo! I wait until the HD rebate program each year to make my paint purchases. (Hint: they’ll do it again around July 4th and Labor Day!) And it is so simple to apply for the rebate. All you need is your receipt and the info paper from the paint desk. I do mine online and from start to finish, it takes less than 5 minutes!
I also received the most amazing information! You may have to sit down for this one: you do not have to get the paint tinted at the time of the purchase! Say what? That’s right. Just purchase the base that you will need and come back later to have it tinted. (You should check with your individual Home Depot before doing this…just in case.) As of right now, we have five gallons tinted in charcoal. After we go through that much, I will go back and get more tinted. I wanted to hold off in case we hated the color once it was actually on the house. I also thought that it would buy me some time to decide upon a trim color. I hope to put aside some of the paint for that part of the project.
Back to the actual painting. On Memorial Day afternoon, the weather cleared enough for us to begin! I was so excited…until I saw how high that extension ladder really goes. Yikes! The hubby let me do some of the painting and then he climbed on top of the little door roof because I had chickened out at that point.
These may not be our best angles, but real projects mean real life:
And can you see in the pictures what a beautiful day it really was? Yeah, that hasn’t happened much since. I was able to get out one morning last week for a few hours and make some progress. Other than the fact that it has been raining every single day, I am also at a stall due to my inability to move and set-up the million pound extension ladder. Plus, again, there is that chicken part.
This is our progress so far:
I completely understand that professional painters may have a heart attack to see that I did the bottom before the top. In my defense: look back and remind yourself of the chicken and weaker than my husband comments that I made above. But from my understanding, the reason you start at the top is so that any scraped paint does not fall into wet paint below. It also helps with the dripping of paint. In my defense (part 2): the bottom will be dry for days before we get to the top and we are very careful of drips (meaning, that we don’t overload the paint brush). Now that this is settled, we can move on…
What do you think? Do you love it? We do! Understand that this is the first coat and a second coat will need to be applied, but so far we are quite happy. Our goal has been to preserve the character of an old farmhouse and be true to it’s time period; but also keep it classic.
The million dollar question: will you keep the trim green? Absolutely, not! We are leaning towards white, but we won’t make that decision until after two coats of paint are on the clapboard. It seems like it is a choice that can only be fully made once we see exactly what we are looking at after the house is fully painted.
Thanks for sticking around and reading this novel. I would love to hear what you think about our choice. And is anyone available for a painting party? 🙂
xo,
Leigh
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