Exterior Painting

Exterior Painting (Sept 1-23)

Well, fall is nearly here and after all the construction, it's defiantly time to paint the house. We've been scraping the old paint off, filling holes and generally doing all the prep work for the house for weeks. This weekend, we finally started actually priming the house.

We hand primed the porch as that had a lot of detail as well as a previously finished/stained ceiling we want to keep clean. Being bare wood, we used a blocking latex primer. For the house itself though, we had to use an oil based primer. Yuck! What a mess. But while the house paint itself will be latex, given the original house paint still on the house and condition of it, oil based primer was the only way to go.

We bought a good quality paint sprayer (Graco XR7) for the job. It was a chunk of change, but given that we'll probably be painting and repainting the house on a regular basis (no vapor barrier pretty much guarantees a shorted paint life), we believe it will be cheaper in the long run than renting it. On this job alone, we estimate our rental bill at about $300 (about $50/day for 6-7 days). The unit cost $500, so one more paint job and we're ahead.

On top of that, airless spraying is the absolute way to go. While we didn't get to priming until noon on Monday (Sept 4), we were done by 5PM! No way that would have been possible with brushes or rollers. Combined with the shingles on the second floor and the beaded board under the eves, this would have taken 4-5 days to prime easy. There was really almost no overspray. Even the main painter (Gerry) barely had much paint on him at all after an afternoon of close quarters spraying. However, it's defiantly easy to put way too much paint on the house or lethally hurt yourself with this thing.

House as it looked when we bought it After the old siding and back porch were removed House after priming House painting complete

This is what I looked like before we started. The head gear was to keep my hair from being matted down with paint. The goggles have a "filmstrip" like front that can be "rolled" aside up to 30 times to clear up when paint covers them and the respirator is basically to keep me alive. As it was, I only needed to "change" the goggles film strip twice and I could probably have skipped the turban entirely (it didn't have any paint on it when done). Cheap insurance though...

Here's a shot of the primed house from the east

Shot of the house from the front

And from the west.

Painting the exterior took quite a while. In retrospect, I guess is was only 23 days from start to end, but it whipped our butts. I was out painting the final bits of the front porch at 1AM the day before the house was on the Old West Side homes tour. But it's done and we're pretty happy (yeah, lots of little touch up work to be done yet, but that's manageably minor).

Heres the final version of this as seen from the east side. The only thing we still want to do is make the white foundation go away. Not sure if we'll strip or repaint, but something (next summer)

Same seen from the front. The terra cotta you see is not really as red as it appears in this photo. The camera over emphasized that a bit.

And finally, for the sake of completeness, the west side too.

Last updated September 27, 2001


House as it looked when we bought it	After the old siding and back porch were removed	House after priming	House painting complete

	This is what I looked like before we started. The head gear was to keep my hair from being matted down with paint. The goggles have a "filmstrip" like front that can be "rolled" aside up to 30 times to clear up when paint covers them and the respirator is basically to keep me alive. As it was, I only needed to "change" the goggles film strip twice and I could probably have skipped the turban entirely (it didn't have any paint on it when done). Cheap insurance though...
	Here's a shot of the primed house from the east
	Shot of the house from the front
	And from the west.

	Heres the final version of this as seen from the east side. The only thing we still want to do is make the white foundation go away. Not sure if we'll strip or repaint, but something (next summer)
	Same seen from the front. The terra cotta you see is not really as red as it appears in this photo. The camera over emphasized that a bit.
	And finally, for the sake of completeness, the west side too.