There She Blues!!

Okay, how many 'blue' reference post titles can I come up with that make me giggle? So far two.

I spent another few hours working this weekend, painting the exterior of the house (our summer project originally mentioned here), this time working on the front entrance area. You might remember that I painted the front door about a month ago (seen here) and I thought it might be a good place to do "round 2" of gettin this ol' house all painted and perdy.

I started by painting the siding blue as before, making sure to get it all the way into the corners. This usually involves using my trusty brush (that I have used on most of my painting projects for the past few years. We're pretty tight, brush and I.) to get into all the cracks and corners, then rolling out paint on the base with a 'wizer' (ie a mini roller).

Once that has dried, I take my trusty brush, and paint the trim in ivory paint. This takes a steady hand to 'cut in' the paint, and can make or break a paint job. I, for no particular reason, am really good at cutting in paint, so this job usually falls on me. In this case, all of the painting job fell on me.

It looks so nice and crisp once I started painting the trim ivory. Here is a little before and after all-in-one shot (ie Erin was only half done painting the trim)

Above you can also see I painted the 'ceiling' area in the ivory as well, just to brighten things up.

It is now a far cry from how it looked a month ago. Here is a 1 month before and after of the entrance area:

And lastly, a photo taken at 'magic hour', when the sun was just going down.

Is anyone else painting their house this summer? Is everyone else ditching home renos for the lake, like I did yesterday? Did you get 'saved' by your 200lb newf dog every time you swam too far from the beach? Does anyone else buy their bathing suits with their dogs fur colour in mind?

We Blue It.

Since first posting about plans to paint the exterior of the house this summer (here), you have all been patiently waiting for the final reveal. Well, you've come to the wrong post. But, we did make some progress. Finally.

Last weekend (okay, last last weekend) we finally started painting the house. I started by, of course, taking some photos (I know. weird eh? It’s like I have a blog or something). Here is a photo of the house as you drive down the driveway.

Wow. Ug-ly. With a capital ‘ugh.’ So right we were to paint this ol’ house of ours. We’ve been working for so many years on the inside, I guess we forgot people could see the outside of it to. Heh, yeah, we’re those neighbours.

While taking the first few photos, Lucy couldn’t help but sneak into the shot. She was actually chasing me and smiling into the camera. What a diva.

I felt a little bad for Dutch – being over shadowed by her little (but huge) sister. Dutch was just behaving during all this, obviously stacking wood for us. Good dog.

Here is a photo of the back-yard-side of the living room. Yes, the siding is on an angle – which we hate – but we plan on doing a major renovation to this room in a few years, and it wasn’t worth the time or effort (or money) to replace it right now. “We’ll just throw a little lipstick on this pig, and it will be good as new” (we hoped.)

And here are photos of the front-walkway-side of our living room. We hate the sunrise shaped window, but for now, like the angled siding, it stays.

After taking the first few photos of the house straight on, I realised just how dirty the gutters and roof were. I knew they were a little weathered, but it had never made it on to our regular maintenance schedule.

I figured that we (by we, I mean Hubby and Jamie) should give the roof a good sweep and scrub. So I loaded the boys up with a few beers and sent them up to do my dirty work. Yes, Ladies, this photo proves that man can sweep! It just takes copious amounts of alcohol and the danger of falling to get them to do it.

I managed the scene and watched the dogs while they worked.

Then came paintin’ time! [Insert a rendition of Erin singing ACHammer’s never released remix of the original song – ‘Stop. Paintin’ time!’]

From what I remember about the house paint when we bought it (which is very little) I don’t remember it being so blue. This was the point when we started saying “Wow, it’s blue alright” (code for “What have we done?!”)

Here is photo evidence that we did indeed use the back end of a shovel as a stirring stick. Don’t judge.

Finally after one day of Hubby and I painting, and another day of me flying solo, we have [most] of the living room painted!

Before

After

Wow, it’s blue alright! [This is when we started saying this every time we walked past a painted side, or noticed the paint left over on our finger nails.

Before

After

Okay, we didn’t entirely finish. Have I ever mentioned that I’m not a fan of heights? This was as far as I could reach with my ladder without my knees getting too wobbly.

Again, only part way up the wall on the other side to. We hope to finish it - [before the kids move out] - in the next few weekends.

There you have it. One weekend of lazy, ‘hey-lets-sleep-in-first’ work. The blue still scared us to death for another week, but started to grow on us after that. Good thing, because we are far from done, and we already paid for the paint.

Have any of you ever painted the outside of a house? Did you own the house for 4 years first before you even noticed that it maybe needed to be painted? Did you buy paint that turned out to be a lot blue-er than it did in the paint store? Are you free next weekend to come over and help finish?