Summer on Sunnyside: Part 2

In the beginning, I don't think hubby or I had any grand notions of painting this house ourselves. Then I heard a friend of a friend bragging about painting her house by hand and saving a ton of money and I got all competitive. I kept thinking, if SHE can paint a house, I can too! So it was decided. We were going to do this ourselves! I realize now that I should be less competitive.

The plan started out with hubby finishing the house exterior projects. First, it was the front porch. Then it was the back porch. Then their was a lot of scraping and sanding. I tried to help. But have you ever scraped the paint off of a house? It's worse than watching paint dry! Tedious and boring. So hubby did 98% of it. (He just made me change this stat from 90% to 98%). In the midst of the scraping and sanding, we picked a paint color. It was hard, but with some input from our friends and neighbors, we found the right one.

Then our neighbors loaned us a paint sprayer, insisting it would make the job easier. I was sold.
Finally, it was Labor Day weekend. Exterior projects were finished. Scraping and sanding was finished. It was time to start painting! I took Friday off so we had 4 days to get the house painted. I think we both thought 4 days would be plenty of time.

The number one thing you should know before starting any house project is that it will take twice as long as you expect and cost twice as much.

Day 1: Finish scraping and begin taping windows.
Day 2: Complete taping windows and get sprayer prepped.

Getting the sprayer prepped consisted of following the directions left behind by the neighbors. Picture me holding directions, reading them step-by-step for hubby to follow.

Plug in the sprayer. Check.
Purge and prime the pump. Check.
Purge and prime the spray hose. Check.
Spray... Um...This is not what the instructions say are supposed to happen. All the paint sprayed in a big glob instead a nice fine mist. We went through the directions again step-by-step. Same results. We thought it was a pin in the spray nozzle so hubby took off the freshly splattered paint suit and we headed to the paint store. It took two paint stores, nearly two hours, and two new parts before we were back at the house going through the directions again. By this time it was late afternoon and it seemed like we were finally getting closer to getting this paint party started.

Plug in the sprayer. Check.
Purge and prime the pump. Check.
Purge and prime the spray hose. Check.
Spray... Nothing.

By now the situate was too funny to get mad about. The whole thing was absurd. We couldn't figure out how to use the dumb sprayer!! I finally gave up, told hubby he could spend the rest of the day trying to figure out the sprayer, but I was going to paint. So I grabbed a brush and started with the window trim. I got this far by the end of day 2. By the end of day 4, we were far from finished and I hate to admit it, but I was so glad to be heading back to work the next day! A week later the house paint was finished - no thanks to me. Hubby spent over ten hours each day finishing the project. I'm pretty thrilled about how it turned out. I was a little worried that the color would be too dark - but I think it looks great and we've received an endless amount of comments from our neighbors and friends. We even had a couple of friends drive right by the house because they didn't recognize it.

Here's a picture of the house before we ripped out the Juniper last summer. And this is the house now.