Can we talk house?

My my my my my my!  I know my house much more intimately than I ever imagined possible.  If you’re feeling disconnected from the center of your universe, the place where you lay your head then I suggest spending time it its rafters.   The place where insulation runs wild and the dry heat beats that of a sauna.  Yes I have been there.  I have had the insulation dust scattered across my face as I spray on paint ,  WAIT.  Let me explain right now so you don’t think that we have gotten out the easy way by mamsy pamsy airless painting a house.  NO.  Just let me tell you what I have been doing lately.

I’ll start at the beginning.  I needed to rid this house of the nasty brown color.  And I had a neighbor who painted his house in 2, count them, 2 days.  He expanded my belief system  to the place where I thought I could do as he, and I attempted to paint my house in a couple of days. 

This is a project that started at the beginning of April.  We thought we would be modest and say that it would be finished by the first of May.  HA.  First barrier belief breaker was the choosing of the paint.  (of which I have written so I won’t bore you again)  Then it was the choosing oft he trim and overall color scheme.  That took  a couple of weeks.

And I knew there would be a bit of prep.  So first we pressure washed with a mixture of Jomax and bleach.  Then we scraped any loose paint and otherwise prepped the house.  And with the house to be painted and fresh I wanted the deck to be fresh and because I didn’t want to splash stripping chemicals  upon a freshly painted house, this had to be done first.  So we stripped the deck and stained with Honey Gold. 

Next was the issue of dis proportionate window trim that needed to be replaced anyway due to a bit of rot in spaces not protected by a soffit.  Ripped it all down.  While it was down we painted out the faded brownish metal window  frames to a beautiful and bright Chatham green.  And I should have mentioned the taping portion but that is a given to trim work,…….still a pain!!

This reminds me of a CC story directly related:  Last night when Tom was ripping down the facial (fascia) not sure exactly what these are called due the thick southern drawl of everyone that has talked about them,  CC looked at him and said,  "Dad, I hate it when you break my house"

Anyway. where was I?  Ah trim work.  Then came the roof.  A perfectly sound roof.  A perfectly sound but streaked and stained from mildew room that had to be bleached.   That took an extra 2 days and hours and hours in the sun.  But we have a glorious non streaked roof because of it.

But I wouldn’t be surprised if because of the gentle washing of the bleach that we wrecked the roof and that too will have to be replaced.  Just saying because due to the nature of this project so far…..I wouldn’t be surprised.  Not to mention the roof sandy pebbles that were sitting in the gutters that we removed yesterday….But I jump ahead of the story.

After the roof, it was finally time to start painting.  Wait I forgot.  We did have to strip off 7 pieces of horizontal trim and every single piece of corner molding, um that would be 10 more stripped down. 

The painting.  Do you remember the photos of my house?  I will repost them at the conclusion of this project but we have wood siding that has a 1/4 inch groove in it every 3 inches.  Now imagine how many grooves in a 2000 square foot house  with a 900 square foot garage?  Well I should have counted them for you because we had to hand brush EVERY-SINGLE-GROOVE from top to bottom before the color was rolled.  We tried to spray the paint but it is so thick that it spreads like butter and kept clogging the sprayer.  Hand brushing and then rolling was our only solution.  Did I mention that the doo-doo brown house is being changed to a lovely sage/khaki green.  So no holidays allowed.  Holidays is an old boating term where you miss a spot of varnish. 

We had the main house color on the back and the front, 90% of the grooves done on the right side and 30% of the grooves done on the left when we has to stop for a bit of construction and repair.  Uncle John came for Memorial Day week end to help.  We had originally planned to have vinyl soffits but when we heard that the cost of materials alone would be over 2000 we pulled back to painting. 

Ah painting!  A whole new can of worms.  First we pulled down the gutters and discovered rotten facial and plywood.   And to make a long story short, every piece of gutter we have pulled down so far has had rotten places to be replaced.  We have been ripping, sawing, splicing, you name it.

Now the plan is:

Take down remaining gutters
Replace all rotten wood
Sand soffit area (because when we decided to paint the current stuff had to be upgraded)
Spray paint all metal ventilation grate
Prime and paint soffit
Paint remaining main color
Paint foundation
Prime and paint 4 doors and trim
Prime and paint 2 garage doors
Cut and replace corner pieces
Cut and replace trim

And now the kicker.  Paint AGAIN.  Because you see taking a do do brown house to a lovely sage green, NO MATTER HOW CAREFULLY DONE, still leaves do do brown holidays.  A second coat is needed.

And another kicker.  I was told that it would take 6-9 gallons of paint to cover my house. 

Guess.  Just Guess.
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22  TWENTY TWO gallons of main house paint to date.  4 gallons of tester colors to decide.  3 gallons of trim color.

Can you say WAY over budget.  And I still have to pay someone to do the gutters.  My 1000 dollar budget MORE than doubled. 

So that is what I have been and currently am doing.  Every waking, non raining day.  And I would say that our May 1st completion date is also shot to pieces.

The good news:  It will be drop dead gorgeous!!!!!!!!!

Can’t wait to show you.