By now, you’ve seen a picture or two of our little house, but just as a reminder, this is what it looked like when we first moved in:
The white aluminum siding is was filthy and very chalky looking. The dusty blue color above the porch and on the shutters was in good shape, but looked kind of dingy and faded, like old blue jeans (I found out from the city that these areas were dark brown originally. Ick.) And of course, that rickety aluminum awning was basically the house screaming that it hadn’t been updated at least since the 1950s. So this past summer, I decided to tackle a big project to really update the curb appeal of our little house: painting.
There are a lot of things to consider when you consider painting a house:
- How much will it cost? This is a big factor. Our house is pretty small, but to have it professionally painted would likely have cost us $5,000 or more for labor alone. Luckily, my dad is a professional painter and gave us the family discount. This comes with the understanding that the job is going to take longer because he was painting the whole house on his own (instead of with a team). For us, it was worth the wait for the savings. It’s also possible to DIY if you have the time and aren’t afraid of heights.
- Is it worth the cost? We aren’t planning on staying in our house forever. So it begged the question, is it worth the money for the update if we’re planning on selling the house a few years down the line? For me, this was a definite yes. The increase in curb appeal was going to be so drastic compared to the original look of the house that it would definitely help us sell the house faster and probably for more when we’re ready to go. Seth was not immediately convinced, but he is almost always skeptical when I suggest a project. I also knew that since we’re staying for a few years, I would be so much happier pulling into the driveway next to a pretty, happy-looking house. And since I’m soooo convincing, Seth eventually allowed me to paint. And, spoiler alert, he ended up really happy with the result.
- What kind of siding do you have? Not all materials are created equal. Brick can be painted with no problem. Aluminum siding and hardie board are also pretty easy to paint. But vinyl siding is another story. If you paint vinyl siding a drastically darker color than its original color, it most often will warp. This is because the darker color absorbs significantly more heat, and the vinyl doesn’t stand up to the change in temperature the way that other materials (like metal or fiberglass) can. Because our garage is not aluminum sided, but vinyl sided, we opted to paint the garage doors to match the house, but not the rest of the white garage. Instead, we just power-washed the white siding to help it look like new next to the newly painted house.
- Is your siding in good shape? If your siding is in disrepair, that could be a problem. You have to power wash before you paint, and holes in your siding could spell trouble (aka water damage). If you only have a spot or two that need a little help, make the repairs and paint away! But if large portions of your siding have seen better days you might be better off in the long run just replacing it all (in a pre-painted color, thus skipping the painting!).
- What kind of paint are you going to use? There are a TON of exterior paint options. We went with Sherwin Williams A-100 Exterior Acrylic Latex paint. My dad has used it before, reviews seemed to agree that it covered well, which was important to me so my dad would have to spend less time on the ladder overall, and at about $50 a gallon, it wasn’t outrageously expensive for such a large job. We’ve been very happy with it so far and it has held up well to the crazy temperature swings we’ve been seeing the last few months.
- What color are you going to use? This is the most fun question but also the most terrifying question. If you screw up a paint color inside your house, repainting is a little annoying, but it’s not the end of the world. If you screw up the paint color of the exterior of your house, you could spend $300 or more just to buy a different paint color, not to mention the cost of labor to change the color again. I took quite a while to decide on a paint color and I’ve done a quick (and amateur) mock up of the colors I considered before I chose the final color. FYI all of these colors are Sherwin Williams colors. I did know I wanted the shutters and trim to be Benjamin Moore Simply White, regardless of the house color. I love some crisp white trim.
Mariner
I love a bright, happy house. If I lived somewhere tropical I would paint my house this color in a heartbeat. That said, a house this bright would look ridiculous with a blanket of snow on the ground. It might even blind people or distract them while driving, which seemed bad, so I sadly decided this wasn’t a viable option.
Fireweed
I’m really not into reds (as I’ve said) but I do love a great red door. So I briefly considered just going whole hog and making my whole house a punchy brick red. I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe it sounded good because I grew up in a brick ranch? I would hate this and I’m glad I decided against it after about 10 minutes.
Web Gray
I transitioned from red straight to a dark gray. It seemed like it would be dramatic and eye-catching but not as scary as choosing an actual color. It’s hard to choose a bad gray. Sometimes they have a little blue undertone, sometimes a more lavender undertone, but I always enjoy gray. However, all of the houses in our neighborhood are tan or white or gray or light blue, and it just felt like it wouldn’t stand out among the crowd. Plus the more I thought about it, the more it reminded me of a house made of wet cinderblocks, which doesn’t seem appealing.
Houseplant
Seth’s favorite color is green and I love me a good green also, so I started thinking along those lines. I like greens with yellow undertones but that seemed very loud for the entire house, so I went with something a little darker. But our house has a LOT of pines out front, plus grass, plus all of the plants Seth is planning on introducing, and it just seemed like an awful lot of green. So I decided against green.
Connor’s Lakefront
So I kept coming back to my personal favorite: blue. I love a great teal or turquoise (hello Mariner, my first choice) but obviously that was a little much. So I looked for the much richer, deeper version of what I like and came up with this color. I do like it, but I worried that it was still a little “loud”. If I was planning on staying in this house forever, I wouldn’t have thought twice about painting the house Connor’s Lakefront, and I still think it would be adorable in this color. However, we are planning on moving in a few years, and part of the reason for the paint change was to increase the curb appeal of the house when we do decide to sell. If we paint it a color that’s too crazy, it’s kind of defeating the purpose still, so I had to let go of that lovely green undertone in the blue.
Rainstorm
So having decided on blue, and accepting the fact that teal was not going to work this time (*sigh*), I started looking for something equally dramatic but somehow more neutral, and I definitely found it in this color. It’s a beautiful deep blue, almost navy, but just a little brighter. It’s dramatic but not loud the way a bright color would be. And it makes the white trim and shutters pop. Once I got here, I knew it was a winner. And I mean really, is our house not 40x more adorable? And it really stands out from all of the neutral toned houses in the neighborhood, so when it comes time to sell, it should be a no-brainer for people looking in our area.
For those who are brave and want to DIY their house paint, here are the necessary steps to be completed:
- Trim back any vegetation (bushes, trees, etc) that touch your house.
- Remove anything you don’t want to keep (looking at you, awning!).
- Patch any holes and replace any pieces of siding that may need it. The correct way to do this will depend on what type of siding you have.
- Power wash, power wash, power wash. The cleaner you get your siding, the better the paint will stick and the smoother the finish will look. I cannot stress enough how important it is to start with clean siding for this project. This also helps removing any old peeling paint before you start.
- Paint the trim first (and any accessories like the shutters, which we removed for easier painting). Then you don’t have to worry about dripping white paint all over your new siding color.
- Cut in by hand. This is a real pain when you have siding with an overhang like ours, but it really makes a difference in the end result.
- Go back in for the big sections with the roller. This helps the application look smoother than if you roll before you cut in.
- Do several coats. Make sure you inspect the coverage you get after each coat is fully dry. If you can see the old color bleeding through in some areas, do another coat. It sounds annoying, but you’ll be happy you did in the long run.
And a few bonus tips if you want to DIY:
- You can use a paint sprayer for siding. It eliminates the cutting in step in most cases and can make the job go much faster. However, the prep work increases because you MUST make sure to tape off all trim, windows, and doors very carefully in order to keep them looking good after applying paint with a sprayer. Also, it can be easy to create drips with a sprayer if you apply paint too slowly or don’t wait long enough between coats. Lastly, our paint was pretty thick. It covered well, but it may not have been kind to a sprayer nozzle, which can get clogged and then would need to be thoroughly cleaned before continuing work.
- Work on this project in the fall or spring. Paint cures better when it’s not 85 degrees out, and you will be much less hot, cranky, and dehydrated after a day of painting in 65-70 degree weather as opposed to 85 degree weather.
- If you have a mischievous puppy, do NOT set your paint brush down where he can reach it. He will cover himself, you, and your patio in paint in a matter of seconds. He will think it is a really fun game. You probably will not.
So, now that the house is painted we just have to decide whether to build a new awning (not aluminum, don’t worry!) to keep the rain off on the porch or to leave it uncovered because it’s so cute as it is (and we never walk in the front door anyway). What do you think of our color choice? Should we add a new awning? Share in the comments section!