Adventures in House Painting

Somebody recently brought to my attention the fact that I hadn’t written anything on my blog in over a year, as though I somehow had missed that fact. And while I have been inordinately busy over the past year, which business interfered with my writing, I was never so busy that I managed to forget the fact that I hadn’t been writing. I mean, can someone who writes for a living forget the fact that they haven’t been writing? That’s like asking a dentist if he’s forgotten that he hasn’t drilled any teeth lately. Spare me the absurdly obvious; the patently obvious will do just fine. Anyway, for those who were beginning to think I’d suffered a paralyzing stroke or tripped and fallen into a black hole, I will attempt to put out a few periodic posts.


My Oh-So-Yellow NoDak House

So, what have I been doing that’s taken SO much of my time? Well, it all started last summer when we decided to paint our house. Ever paint a house? It’s one of those tasks which is quickly fading into the ever-growing list of things that nobody does anymore, what with the proliferation of vinyl siding and plastic trim. I suppose they are good in the sense that they spare one from the tedious task of painting, but you have to really like bland colors. After all, all vinyl siding that I have ever seen comes in a rainbow of weak pastel colors – powder blue, washed out yellow, faded beige, almost non-existent gray, and – of course – white. But I’m just not a pastel kind of a guy. I really dislike weak colors. I like strong, bold colors. Jewel tones. Saturated hues. When I lived in North Dakota, I painted my house Tonka yellow, with spruce green trim and burgundy accents. My neighbors about had fits when they saw the yellow starting to go one. They thought I was out of my mind. But once all of the trim and accent was done, I heard things like, “I hated that color when you first started, but now that you’re all done, I really love it.” I even got a photograph of the house in the paper. (Granted, it was a small town and a slow news day, but still….) So, after much debate and many trips to the store to look at color swatches, Michelle and I decided to paint our current house dark red, with black trim and sage green accents. Then we got bought the paint, borrowed a power washer, and went to work.

Now, this house had not been painted in at least 30 years, and it showed. The house is clad in cedar shingles, which were sporting a very tattered coat of peach paint, and all of the trim was white- dirty, peeling white. 

Faded Peach with Crap Brown Shutters - UGLY!

And we had shutters. You know, the totally non-functional plastic kind that are screwed to the wall. Painted a lovely shade of crap brown. When I started taking those down to repaint, I discovered that every one of them had turned into a wasp hotel. Yup! Massive wasp nests behind each one. I would carefully undo the screws, then leap out of the way as the shutter clattered to the ground and hordes of really ticked off wasps would come swarming out only to massacred by copious quantities of Raid! I decided that the shutters were NOT going back up. Then we scraped. And scraped. And scraped. And scraped. By the way, did I mention that we scraped. Yeah, lots of that. The paint was in such bad shape that in many areas, we ended of scraping clean down to the bare cedar. After more than a week of scraping, it was time to paint. It was also about then that it decided to rain.


Well, paint went on, followed by more paint, followed by still more paint. Bare wood soaks up a lot of paint!

Now That's One Good Looking House!

I had my daughters help me paint. I enlisted friends to help me paint. The overhanging soffits were great fun. Nothing to fix your aching back like painting something that's over your head...for two weeks. Those 2-1/2 foot soffits took a lot of paint too. Michelle heroically painted every single door, window, screen and storm window in the house. Took her weeks, but she stuck to it and finished the job. She’s a trooper! The end result was well worth the labor. The house just pops now.

People stop their cars to tell us how great it looks. All of that dark red and black look so good together, and the sage green windows and doors really stand out against it. No vinyl siding ever looked this good, or ever could. People put up vinyl to save themselves labor, but the best things in life are worth sweating for, and a little paint makes all of the difference in the world.

Next up, landscaping!