Whole House Painted Makeover! Exterior Paint Makeover

by Art is beauty

After 20 years of the house never having been painted, it was time! Come see how we basically spent our summer, cleaning prepping and painting our two story house for a whole house exterior paint makeover.

painting exterior house makeover, curb appeal, home improvement, paint colors, painting

Good Morning my Beauties! I just realized that I never showed you what the house looked like after the month of painting this summer.

Our house had not been painted in over 20 years. The previous owners had painted it, and that was the last time.

From the initial pictures I know it doesn't look that bad but the aluminum was starting to come through the paint. There were blotches all over the siding where the paint had worn away down to the original plain siding.

It was time....It only took me a whole year to pick the color. :) It was very hard to edit these pictures because in the wonderful Michigan weather conditions are rarely ideal for photographing. We had either FULL sun, or FULL shade. So don't mind me if it shows up a little bit blue. Its actually more of a Gray with just a little hint of blue in it.

This is what we began with. It took us 3 days to just power wash the house. We used TSP a scrub broom and water and a power washer to wash the house. I was ready to be done, just after that. All the soffits, window trim....EVERYTHING, had to be clean before we began.

Once all that was done, it was time to start painting. The hubby had started trimming out around on the 2nd story. He was going to be using a sprayer but wanted to not have to be one handed and holding a spray gun up at the highest parts of the peaks on the side. A 30 foot ladder just barely reached.

Once the trimming was done we could start. I started on the bottom while he worked on the top. Just the trim work alone took almost a week. So overall right now we were into our second week. With all the moving of the ladder between the two of us, it pretty much came to be that you could only get to one side a day. If you have ever moved a 30 foot aluminum ladder, you will understand the amount of just TIME that goes just into moving the ladder and climbing up and down.

Then this fun happened..

A good old Electrical fire from a transformer that blew out in the power lines. It was a lot of stress, but thankful that we were able to walk away and start back working on the house after a day.

After the full 2nd week of trimming, me painting shutters, doors, and trim...Hubby finally got to use the sprayer.

The sprayer a friend had lent us decided it was done. It had apparently retired just after the last job that the contractor used it on, but failed to notify its owner. So after 3 hours of my Husband trying to get it to work, and creating a tapestry of obscenities quietly under his breath, we called the rental place.They had a sprayer that we could use that day. We rushed off to the rental place, having already wasted almost half a day

trying to get the other to work. We busted our tail. I don't think we honestly stopped until 9:30 pm and the only reason we did was because we could no longer see. It was dark..We had to stop and start all over again the next day. If you know anything about paint sprayers then you know that means you have to clean the WHOLE thing (which takes a good hour) So you can do it all again tomorrow. :(

We finished up the next day.This had now been over 3 weeks of work. I know in writing this it seems like it must have gone pretty fast, but painting this house was pretty much our life this summer. I have painted a lot of things in my life, but painting a house is not something I look forward to ever doing again.

Finally; time for the fun part.

I painted all the trim around the windows, the garage door and doors a bright white. I then painted the shutters that had been a dark deep green black a nice creamy parchment color.

Hubby got to once again get back up on the ladder and put them back up. (this is where I have to say THANK YOU to him for not being afraid of heights, I never could have done it). I finished painting the front door and the service doors the Crushed oregano I had picked out and we were finally DONE!!

I honestly couldn't believe how many compliments we had from all the neighbors. They were stopping me while out in the yard, even at the store. Telling me how much they LOVED the new house color. Some of them even threatened to steal the colors. I told them good luck...I custom made the blue gray myself by mixing some paint samples and then had it color matched.

This house now fits my personality. I have always said I needed to be surrounded by color. Now I truly am, inside and out. I hope you enjoyed this latest makeover.

Until next time, go make someones day BEAUTIFUL!

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1 question

17335038 on Jul 09, 2020

What brand/type of paint did you use, and what did the project cost you?

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2 of 9 comments

Lawrence Kohlberg, on Jun 30, 2020

Nice paint job!

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Julie F on Mar 22, 2022

I too have a two story house that needs to be painted. I am not looking forward to all the scrapping and sanding , and caulking that has to be done before we even get to the painting. Your post gives me hope

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