Painting Project

2007
When we moved into our house the inspector said there were a few places that needed to be wire brushed and touched up with paint.

That was code for, "the paint is completely peeling off your house and it will have to be stripped and repainted."

Two years later repainting the house finally made it to the top of the project list.

We got an outrageously priced estimate for a company to just spray one coat of paint over the peeling paint. We decided it might be worth the work to try to do the prep ourselves.

June 2009
Matt stripped, sanded, and primed a section of the siding on the back of the house. Then we painted it 3 colors to try to decided which one we liked best. Then we stopped work because working on your house outside in June in Mesa is pretty much the worst idea.

November 2009
Matt took off 2 weeks to prep the rest of the house. Pressure washing took off almost all the paint because it was peeling so badly. He then sanded, scraped, and re-caulked (20+ tubes worth) the rest of the house. He also replaced some of the boards and removed all the extra wires, nails, satellites left on the house that we didn't need. It was a TON of work. Both of our dads and our brother-in-law John were nice enough to give up their time to come help Matt.

December 2009
The painting prep gradually gets finished up. A friend of Matt's uncle gives us a really good deal to come and spray the primer and two coats of paint as well as tape off everything and do the trim. Here are the before and after shots and a video of the process-

Before

Pretty bad peeling on the siding and footers

During

After- We love it!

Note on the video: the pregnant shot of me near the end was when I was 9 months along with Charlotte. I'm not even showing yet so I haven't taken any pictures this time around. It was just the only shot I had of the front door before painting.

click on the "four arrows" on the bottom right to see the video full screen size

Painting 2009 from Erin Whitmer on Vimeo.