The Walls (Finally) Get Pretty

After yesterday’s post, which was chock-full of prepping and priming, we were ready to get some paint on this house. It just so happens that one of our helpers these past few weeks professionally painted house exteriors to put himself through college.

Are we lucky or what?!

Dave brought his airless spray painter. And now I want one. But he made it look so easy to use, and I’m sure that isn’t the case. Here he is prepping the sprayer for its work duties for the day.

The house is covered and primed and ready to soak up a first coat of paint. Today, we will get through two coats of paint on the walls. We will return next week to paint the trims and upper moldings a dark coordinating color.

It will be gargeous!

This was the side wall, ready for some primer after Tom scraped the living daylights out of it. While Dave sprayed the rest of the house, this side wall got some primer. It’s nice to only need an hour of drying before it can be coated in paint!

By the time he finished spraying the rest of the house, this wall was ready for the spray gun.

Tom was busy on another side of the house, priming some bare wooden trim. This won’t be painted today, but it’s nice to protect it from the elements so that it will be ready to go when we return next Saturday.

In case you didn’t know, it is beyond fascinating to watch a professional painter work his magic. I was so excited for the walls to go from partially-covered-in-ancient-paint to incredibly awesome…all in a matter of seconds.

And Dave was very good at what he does.

So, honestly, I think that we were all bummed that it simply wasn’t in the present budget to paint the brick on the lower portion of the house. But I can’t tell you enough how wonderful it looks next to the new wall color!

It’s almost like new life was breathed into the old brick by painting just above them. Other than a few character stains from almost-fifty years of the elements wreaking havoc on them, the brick also looks like it has been given another chance at life.

Since a lot of the prep work was done, there wasn’t much to do now but to admire Dave’s handiwork. A few of us helped him with the hoses, drop cloths, and sprayer so he could keep moving without keeping track of all of those things.

Peyton climbed the roof and painted the chimney the same beautiful color that was going on the walls. No surface was left out when it came to our loving today.

Also in this shot, you can see the paint color versus the white primer on the walls. To the right has been sprayed and looks awesome. On the lower chimney, it still needs a shot of paint. Isn’t the difference incredible?!

Marshall got up on the roof as well to prime this wooden trim. Since this gets lots of direct sunlight each afternoon, it was critical to get it primed and painted in order to protect the wood from warping.

Our harsh desert sun can do lots of damage in a very short amount of time.

The sidewall has been primed, but I love this picture of the newly-painted walls! Doesn’t it look wonderful? And it matched so well with the brick. Actually, when they picked out paint colors, this looks a little more gray in the samples. It is a very warm gray on the walls.

We were surprised when it was first being sprayed, but in a good way.

Since the upper trim won’t be painted today, Hubby kept busy by filling in cracks in the forty-eight year-old wooden beams with caulk. This will look seamless after it gets covered in paint next weekend.

Meanwhile, Dave kept spraying like there was no tomorrow. I would love to build a door for their water heater to be covered again. But just a coat of paint made its shelter look a lot better already.

Holy smokes. This looks amazing! It was very satisfying to see the paint going on at last. We have been working on this house for five weeks now, and it’s always nice to see a glimpse of what the final product will look like.

All of this trim under the back patio used to be blue paint. Everyone voted to paint it with the lighter color rather than the dark. The light gray really adds lots of warmth and height to the patio instead of making it feel more closed in. I really love the impact.

   

Dave was like an energizer bunny today, as long as we kept him hydrated. So demanding! But covering the entire house in its first coat took less than an hour. Wow!

And even cable boxes and wires can look better with a fresh coat of paint.

  

After a long, exhausting day, the two coats of paint were finished. We had been here since about 8:30 this morning and finally left around 5:30 this evening. A long day, but what a difference in the house!

You can still see glimpses of the blue that used to be on the walls underneath the covered porch. Those will all turn into a beautiful dark gray next week. But I love seeing it next to the new walls, which were oh so recently the same color.

Doesn’t this look better?! I love it. I absolutely love it.

Already the house looks new and fresh. I also love taking away all of the paper and tape to reveal an almost-done finished product. Sorry that I’m always so impatient!

Have I mentioned that they are letting me paint the door red?! And I have already sprayed all of the fixtures (light, doorbell, mailbox, house numbers) in a beautiful satin nickel finish to match the door handle. It will all look amazing once the trim is done and I can put them up again!

This is the carport showing their garage entrance to the house. How clean and nice does this look? The door trim with get a nice, dark color on it. And, maybe eventually, the door can get a new coat of paint as well.

Here is the sidewall with two coats of paint. Doesn’t it look better than scraped giant brick? I really love the warm color on the walls.

All of this upper trim will be a new dark gray next Saturday. And the homeowner wanted to paint the window trims that dark color as well but says he can do it. All of those accents will really pop when we are finished in about a week.

Here is the west-facing side of the house, which has taken quite a beating from the setting sun all those years. It now looks brand-new.

Here is the back patio with two coats of paint. And you can see that the new trim above has been primed and is ready for trim color when we return next Saturday.

My goodness, this looks incredible. It was worth all of the hard work just to see it looking like this!

 

And even the back patio door got a facelift today. One less thing to worry about when we come to add the finishing touches to this home.

And here is the back wall of the master bedroom. Their home has a very similar floor plan to ours!

We had to trim out a bunch of old ivy before painting this section. It had taken over the world and was starting to climb up into the wooden trim and was splitting it away from the rest of the house.

I’m glad that it was stopped before the rest of the neighborhood started to notice missing children everywhere…

Done for the day, and I couldn’t be happier with the results. I’m so glad that we had so many professionals helping out. It really made this home look polished and new. Can’t wait to see what the dark trim does to finish the rest of our paint job next week!

Prepping and Priming for Exterior House Paint

Believe it or not, but we’ve gotten a lot done on the house since my last post about it. Hubby is helping to paint the outside of a neighbor’s house to teach a bunch of teenage boys how to paint. The neighbors get a newly-painted house, and the boys learn an important life skill that will help them down the road.

Win-win, in my book.

With all of the scraping finished, it was time to protect the house from primer and paint. We picked a beautiful overcast Saturday to work on this phase of the project.

In just a few short hours, hopefully their neighbors will be able to stop worrying that this family has lost all desire to maintain their home! I admit…after getting rid of some flaking paint, the house wasn’t exactly looking stellar.

Today will be an instant upgrade, however, with some priming taking place. Actually, we painted the walls today, too, but I will save that for another post. It is incredibly satisfying to see these walls go from blue to white primer to a gorgeous warm gray.

We taped some newspapers down to protect the brick, which isn’t getting painted during this particular house painting excursion. And we protected the cement below with more newspapers, because we don’t want our work to look messy!

The lower walls are going to transform today…from blue to beautiful! A week from now, we will return to spray all of the trim a darker color than the walls.

Hubby got to work rolling the primer onto the walls. Primer will help make a better bond for the top coats of paint. Since this is all exterior in the extreme desert, we wanted to provide every opportunity for this paint job to last. So primer was a must.

Charles came behind Hubby with a paintbrush to fill all the gaps between raised board layers on the walls. I’m already loving the color change!

We worked for about an hour this morning without any boys arriving. They were helping at the Turkey Trot and had to finish cleaning up while we adults headed to the house to begin prepping. About an hour into our work, the boys arrived to help.

  

But we got a lot done before they showed up. It’s amazing how much work can be accomplished by several helping hands!

The primer was soon down and only needed an hour to dry before the house could have its first coat of paint. We still needed to finish protecting the house from overspray from the paint gun, so we weren’t quite ready for paint just yet. All of that brick needed to be covered with plastic wrap or newspaper. Same thing with all of the windows and doors!

But it’s already looking awesome, huh? At this point, I was reminded of how much I love seeing the end result. I think that’s why my model airplanes never really worked out as a kid. I would get so excited to paint that I wouldn’t let the glue dry properly from assembly.

Hmmmm. Maybe I’ve always been impatient! Who knew?

This is awesome Tom. He was scraping this side of the house before some primer went on. Flaky paint means that the new paint won’t be able to adhere, so we had to make sure that all surfaces were ready to go.

Thankfully, because of the paint being sprayed on, this prep work was the hardest part. Once the paint started going on with a sprayer, it was a very quick process. So quick, in fact, that we did both coats of paint on the walls before we left today around 5:30 PM!

As you can see, this window needs more attention than just some primer. After the primer layer went down, we filled all of those holes with caulk. It looks brand-new, now, and is gorgeous!

We also primed all of the door and window trim, though they will need to be painted with the darker color after the walls have been sprayed with the light.

This side of the house, which got scrubbed to perfection by several people last time that we were here, got a coat of primer as well. It’s amazing to me how just a little paint primer can already make something look so much better!

  

Everyone pitched in to help. And when the boys arrived, they got to work covering the brick so that the spraying of the walls could commence.

Every window got protected as well. Ann and I worked hard on that while the men folk covered the house with plastic.

We even came back to protect these windows entirely with newspapers. With such a powerful spray gun doing all of the painting work, we had to make sure that all areas that we didn’t want painted were well-covered.

I will come back to paint these ironwork pillars after all of the house is finished. They are also letting me paint the door a beautiful deep red, so I’m really excited for that! Maybe next week when I am home for a few days from work…

Lots of help arrived this morning. Throughout the day, we probably had about fifteen people helping. We even had a neighbor friend drive by to see what was going on…and then she returned with a casserole for dinner for all of us to enjoy after working so hard!

I love living in this area. Have I mentioned how wonderful these people are?

We even have this side of the house scraped and primed. Someone will be along shortly to prime this bare wood above. This trim was rotting away, so another friend in the neighborhood donated his time and skill to replace it!

And it looks gorgeous. It’s amazing how much can be accomplished when everyone gives a little. We really appreciated the help from all of these experts, too.

It’s just a double-bonus that he lays wooden trim for a living!

The entire back of the house was primed and ready for paint as well. Ann and I continued our window covering skills back here until everything was prepped and ready for paint. Then the boys moved these boxes to the yard so they wouldn’t get covered in paint when the patio was sprayed.

And then, because the spray gun has so much force, we carefully swept away all paint chips and debris so that it wouldn’t fly back up onto the walls during painting. With this last step complete, I think that we’re ready for the fun part.

Let’s paint this thing!