Porch Painting Before + After

So, after living here for 9 years and working on the exterior of the house little by little for the past 3, we FINALLY got some paint ON THE HOUSE!!

So, the last time I wrote about painting was when we were finishing up the soffitt around the porch.

To jog your memory

Here's what the house looked like before the soffitt and trim were painted way back in 2012:

And here's the "after" from last fall:

And finally, the finished-ish product!

It didn't look half bad and I was feeling pretty confident in our color choices for the whole house.

When the weather was consistently nice we decided to go ahead and get started on painting the actual porch. Before we get started, I realize that this is probably not how you go about painting a house. There are rules! You work tirelessly scraping and filling and sanding and priming every square inch of the house before you start painting. HOWEVER, I have seen those poor souls. I have walked my dog by their scaffolding week after week, month after month, giving them a little wave of acknowledgement until the weather gets too hot or too cold and they retreat for months at a time.

So instead, I decided to clean, prime, scrape and paint just the part of the house that was in reasonably good shape - the porch - to fortify myself for the crap journey that lies ahead.

And you know what? It totally worked! Am I looking forward to putting scaffolding on our roof in the fall? NO, friend. But I've seen the progress and it's wonderful and I want to finish the job. So, without further ado:

PREP

To start with, we took everything off of the porch. Every plant hook, stray nail, wreath screw, unused porch swing 2x4. Everything. Including the porch furniture

Here's my dear mother and father working way harder than anyone 45 years old ever should : P

Looks better already!

Then up went the scaffolding so we could power wash the ceiling of the porch. P.S. My mom is the only person on the earth who can look this pretty while hoisting scaffolding above their head. I said it.

Then my dad got to work playing in the water er I mean, POWER WASHING THE PORCH lol while we scraped paint off of the balisters and trim. I didn't get a lot of pictures of this because
1) scraping
2) water and cameras don't mix

But here's the before of the porch floor:

And after:

Dang. Thank you power washer!

I should mention that over the course of this paint odyssey, we've looked for/tried every paint scraping tool known to man. This guy is still my absolute favorite but my mom tried this heat gun from Harbor Freight and honestly? It worked pretty well. I was shocked. It cut through latex paint like a hot knife through butter and even took off a lot of the enamel paint, too!

TRIGGER WARNING: BIG OL' SPIDER AHEAD!








Another thing my mom discovered - this lovely lady hiding right up underneath the porch rail with her bbs : /

I shouldn't be surprised since Conan and I have found two of these before around the outside of the house but I just always assumed they weren't a thing in Kansas. Brown recluses? Sure. Everywhere. But black widows? I thought we left them in the smoky mountains of northeast Tennessee when we moved here 22 years ago but I guess they followed us. Sorry, everybody!

PRIME-TIME

By the time I got a picture, we had already put a coat of paint on the windows so that's why they're cream colored but you get the idea. Nice and sparkly white!

PAINTING

You can see at this point that we had already painted the siding and trim. So much for taking a bunch of photos : /

BUT, Conan did highly endorse this trim brush:

When you're painting what has to be MILES of trim everyday, it really is worth the $6 to get an actual trim brush with one of these stumpy, soft handles. Your wrist will thank you for it!

Here are some of those miles of trim:

Funny story: We actually painted the balusters and railing a different color than what you see in this photo (there was no red trim and the white parts were the color of the siding) then, we stepped back to look at it and immediately knew it didn't look right. We hopped in the car and drove around looking for porches with rails like ours to see where we went wrong and the answer was - not enough contrast. Conan re-primed and re-painted the rails in a day so that I could get my bunting up by Memorial Day : )

When it came time to paint the treads on the stairs we were equally stumped. I noticed that a lot of the photos I liked on Pinterest of similar houses had the risers painted the color of the balusters and the treads, the color of the trim so that's what we decided to do!

We used Valspar Porch, Floor & Patio paint because it had a little grit to it and you could have it custom tinted.

Here's Conan plugging away with his handy dandy trim brush.

Another of Conan working on the steps because I a) love my little bunting that took years to find and b) Wichita flag!

We also gave the fence a couple coats of primer and the same cream color paint as our risers and balusters. Here's the before:

And the after:

And that brings us to today (well, a few days ago, actually)!

We still need to prime and paint the steps on the south side of the house and re-install our railing that's just sitting there oh, and PAINT THE REST OF THE HOUSE but I'm really pleased with how it's turned out. What's even better? The neighbors seem to like it : )

Thanks to Mrs. DIY for reminding me to include the actual paint colors and brands on this post about PAINTING THE HOUSE ; )

Siding/Columns: Olympic One, Satin Latex in Tortuga

Dark green trim: Valspar Signature, Latex Satin in Olive Smudge

Red trim: Pittsburgh Paramount, Latex Satin in Dutch Boy's Red Farmhouse



Up next?

We did something crazy AGAIN ; ) Can't wait to share this little nugget!

Wichitawesome

Man, what a busy couple of weeks we've had. 

This time of year is when things start to kick into high gear with Lamphouse. Graduations, weddings, public parties now that the weather is *hopefully* warm enough! It's a whirlwind of activity all over the 'ta. 

This past weekend we took the Lampy Camper out to Final Friday (Wichita's monthly art crawl) and parked in front of a cool new venue to take some pics.

That was event 1 of 4 and by the end of the weekend, we had taken over 2,000 photos!!!

#tooblessedtobestressed

By far, the most instagramed part of the Lampy Camper was her Wichita flag sticker and little Heidi Swapp lightbox sign. What can I say, people love them some Wichita! 

So, we figured we could eek out one little project to commemorate our ICT pride. We went to Wings of the Wind and picked up a 28" x 44" medium sized flag and wooden pole and got to work! Well, Conan did any way ; ) 

Just look at this nut! 

I asked him if he was just doing this for the picture or if he actually thought that would keep him from falling. "Just for the picture" he said...VERY sarcastically. 

They had a nifty little flag pole holder that can be adjusted to tilt up or down or straight out. I prefer it straight out but who knows, it's good to have options! 

 Ta da! Beautiful! It looks really sharp with the new trim paint and I know the red and white will really pop when the whole house is done. 

Our new neighbors directly to the south put their Wichita flag up as soon as they moved in and it started a wave of flags popping up all over the neighborhood. 

Funny story: while we were taking these photos, a woman drove by, stopped a couple of houses down the street, got out of her car with her phone and took a photo of all of the flags! 

I think this could be our new neighborhood thing! The Wichita flag street! 

Thanks for having such a neat flag, Wichita! And for being a great place to call home : ) 

 Here's a little Wichita flag history if you're interested: 

Adopted in 1937

Designed by Cecil McCalister

Features 3 rays extending from a blue center with the Native American symbol for home, or "hogan" in the center. 

Up next? We start clearing out the jungle in the backyard in preparation to build a privacy fence next weekend. Stay tuned and

Keep Smiling! 

Painting the House Exterior: Porch Soffit Edition

In yet another sign that the apocalypse went ahead and happened and 2016 was in fact our last year on earth and we are all living in some sort of weird alternate universe -  we have PUT PAINT ON THE EXTERIOR OF OUR HOME. 

I repeat: we have taken a PAINT BRUSH, dipped it in PAINT, and then APPLIED IT to our HOME. 

About (gosh!) six months ago, I got a wild hair and decided it was "time" to get down to business on painting the exterior of our house. Despite the fact that it had been over a year since I last posted about it, or since we had even done any kind of prep work, something about late August in Kansas just said ~paint your house~ to me. 

So we spent a good hour or so looking at paint colors and getting samples and then we sat them in the basement and that's where they sat for (double gosh!) two months.

If you've been taking your ginkgo, you might remember that time over TWO YEARS AGO when I posted about our repaired/replaced soffit on the front porch and our plans for the exterior.

It was all painted and primed and ready to go and it had started looking a little...rough so with the weather somewhat nice, my mom and I got started cleaning and putting paint on the soffit and front gables of the porch.

And here's a look just after we started the north side of the porch:

And with the scaffolding moved:

You can see that we got excited and painted a little bit of the siding as well just to be certain that the colors looked good. 

I sat out on the porch and looked at it in every light and I have to say, I'm really really feelin' it. Since these photos were taken we've had our Christmas decorations up, too and it looks pretty darn slick with the new trim paint.

Here's a look at the north gable before:

and after:

So much sharper!

And a little farther back:

We decided to do the interior shakes on the gables in the cream color and then just continue the pattern from the soffit up there, too.

I've known I wanted to paint the house green since we moved in so that was a no brainer but the trim was up in the air. 

A lot of the houses I saw on Pinterest had that greenish/grayish siding + white window trim + dark brown screens look and I felt that too for a while but I'll be honest with you, I was not looking forward to covering up the dark green window trim with white. 

Then it happened. Instead of working on our house, we were binge-watching Fixer Upper and in episode 1 of season 2 they visit a bungalow type house with green siding, and green and red trim. FYI: it's not the house they picked but the first one they looked at in the episode. 

"That's it!" I yelled. Here's a bad screen cap for reference: 

Now, admittedly our house is a little more intricate and a lot less covered in trees and bushes but after finishing this portion, I really feel like we're headed in the right direction! It doesn't look a whole lot different yet but once the siding has paint on it, it will be like a completely new house.

(lol at what the Jeep has done to our column : / antique automobiles, am I right?)

The next steps will be moving down onto the actual porch and painting the siding, columns, steps, ceiling, and whatever else there is on a porch. Can you hear the overwhelming-ness in my typing?

It's gonna' be a real process. My bet is on two years, my mom says one, maybe one and a half?
Place your bets in the comments if you want to make things interesting. Again, this will be for when the house is *actually* finished, not when I *finally* blog about it!

See you guys at some point in the future!

Thanks for sticking with us! 

Keep Smiling!!

Exterior Plans & Lamphouse News

So, in my last post I mentioned that we'd be talking about some exterior projects and some exciting Lamphouse developments. 

I'll start with the Lamphouse stuff since it's quick and easy and I'm really excited to share the reason we've been sort of slacking around the house (well, at least blogging about it).

Ta-da!
We put a digital photobooth in the Grand Wagoneer!

The Lampy camper is still around and we just used it last week to take some fun family portraits but for now, it only goes where its rented since there's such a large amount of labor involved. We decided earlier this year to add a digital photobooth to our fleet that would be a lot easier for us to set-up (and park!) than the camper and would be a lot better suited for large events like weddings and concerts and stuff.

The photobooth part is actually in the back and you stand behind the tailgate and pose for a few pictures then pick up the prints out of the side window.

Speaking of the Grand Wagoneer tailgate, Conan took out the old carpet and replaced it with a custom, oak liner. It's BEE-YOU-TEE-FULL you guys. Stunning. 

We've done a couple of little events to test it out and it's super fun and works like a charm. It's no hand-developed portrait but people do really enjoy how quick and simple it is and I can't say that I blame them. 

We even tested it out ourselves and it's pretty darn fun, I must say!

Alright, back to house business! Let's talk exterior plans for this big old house!

The exterior of the house hasn't gotten a whole lot of love since we moved in five years ago but that's only because frankly, it scares the living bejeesus out of me/us.

One of the very first things that had to be done was replacing a rotten soffit. My mom and dad built some really "exciting" scaffolding to pull that off. Here's the old pops getting ready to throw a hammer at us for buying a house that was falling apart. Jk, he was holding a paintbrush.

Next were a few cosmetic changes like planting some flowers and building a beautiful picket fence:

So, after all of those things and the odd window re-corded here and there, our house isn't in terrible shape on the outside but it's definitely not in the greatest shape either. The list of little things that need to be done (wood replaced here, window re-glazed there) seems so insurmountable that I would just as soon close my eyes the moment I get out of my car and not open them until I'm inside. 

But

If we're serious about being stewards of this old house we have to take care of all of it, not just the fun, inside, decorate-y parts. 

So about a month ago, I decided that I was going to get serious about putting some paint on the house. Every.single.time I mention starting another interior project, the first thing my dad says is, "What you really need to do is get some paint on this house." Ugh. I wish he wasn't right, but he is. And the only way it's ever going to get done is if I just pick a place and get started. 

I decided a couple of weeks ago that the most logical place to begin would be the front of the house. The siding on the front porch, since it's sheltered, is in pretty good shape and we wouldn't need any scaffolding. The second floor, right above the front porch, is also in decent shape and it wouldn't require scaffolding either. 

So, about the front porch.
Ever since we've moved in, the front steps have been a total mess.

The paint was coming off,

pieces of rotten wood were falling off,

some of the risers weren't even attached to anything anymore.

Yeah.
Yikes. 

So, over memorial day weekend, Conan and I set out to replace them. We bought new risers and new treads and we were all ready to pull up the old ones, easy peezy, put new ones down and be done with it. 

Then we started taking things apart. Dang. 

The stringers were in really rough shape, too.

Big chunks of rotten wood were being pulled out with the risers so we decided it would be best to just scrap the whole thing and start fresh.

We bought new stringers then came home and using the old ones as a template, re-built four of them. 

You can see from all of these pictures that the porch decking itself is also in rough shape. But we did a little pricing on that and let's just say neither of us have a kidney to sell on the black market right now so...that's a no.

We did have to pull up a few pieces, though to replace the very top riser. We scraped the old paint off and put them back where they were.

Here's Conan screwing something to something else. Power tools, yeah! 

It was a lot of that. Cut, cut, screw, repeat.
By the end of this (very long) day we were kind of on auto pilot. Our neighbors were having a memorial day party and generously offered some frosty refreshments but I don't have to tell you guys that power tools and pints don't mix. But man, they sounded like they were having a good time!

When we got to the last tread, about 12 hours after we began this project, I ran inside and got a marker. 

Fun fact: when my parents were remodeling their old house when I was growing up, I remember my mom insisting on having us all write something on the studs before the walls were put up. I'll always remember that as an integral part of a project and so, every room we've worked on in our house has a little message from us hidden somewhere. The front steps were no exception! 

So, there's the finished product!

Like I said, the decking is still pretty rough but they are about 1 BILLION times more sturdy and much more worthy of our old house. They really do make things look so much cleaner and nicer and I can't wait to put some paint on them in a month or two. You aren't supposed to paint treated lumber for a little while so that it can dry out so that gives me time to decide on some colors for the front of the house. Here's my inspiration so far: 

I really like the dark green on this house. I've been trying to focus on houses that have columns similar to ours to see how they handled painting them but I don't think I would paint ours two different colors like this. Maybe too much green that way? 

This one is really pretty and I love all of the different colors. I really think that our house needs at least three, maybe four colors since we have some decorative shakes on the third floor and the porch eaves that are kind of similar to the third floor of this house. My only concern is that this house is a little more ornate than ours so there might not be room for all of the different colors that I like so much on our house.

Speaking of several colors, I passed by this house on my way home from work last week and I just fell in love with the subtle differences in grey and blue.

This crappy cellphone picture doesn't do it justice but I really think that with a darker contract color maybe on the screen windows, this could be the perfect inspiration. I especially like the different color on the little scalloped shakes.

Thoughts? As you can see, I'm really leaning toward a green color palate. Funnily enough, we've always known that we were going to paint the house green - it was the inspiration for the name of our old Etsy business, Green House Paper years ago : )

So, I'll keep you guys abreast of any exterior developments that are made. It's likely to be a slow and arduous process that stretches out over the next several years I expect.

In the meantime, I've got a couple of little projects on the second floor I'm tinkering with and will share when I get the chance.

Keep Smiling!