One of my last posts was a before and after tour of the house (you can find that post HERE). I wanted to do a similar tour of the outside of the house, but there’s one minor post that you should see before then. Here’s what the house looked like when we bought it:

nice curb appeal
I don’t know about you, but the red paint was doing absolutely NOTHING for me. It made the house look old and tired, which is no good. Given the “Eichler-esque” style of the house, we drove through a real Eichler neighborhood in San Mateo and got some inspiration. We decided to go with a dark blue-grey with a bright white trim color. We also wanted a punch of color on the garage and front doors (you can’t see the front door from the street though unfortunately).
Tommy toyed with the idea of painting the house himself, but since it would take him FOREVER to clean, sand, and paint the house….we got about 5 estimates instead. We ended up choosing a painter by the name of Derrick lawlor Painting. He was slightly higher than the others, but his methodology and price included a lot more. A couple of items he included that were considered extras from the other painters were:
1. Fix any dry rot: We have a little dry rot (as with most older homes) at the base of the garage and other areas where the roof previously leaked (before we reroofed back in May 2012).
2. Sand and paint the silver gutters: If you look closely at the photo of the house, the top of the white trim is actually the silver gutter. Derrick was the ONLY painter to include this in his quote. The silver looked very out of touch then, and it still would have…if it was silver.
3. Sanding the entire house: A couple of our quotes didn’t include this either. The other painters were simply going to powerwash the house to clean it, but not actually sand the house. They would only sand the areas of the chipping paint. What this ends up with is layers of paint on top of layers of paint and can lead to more chipping of the paint.
4. Caulking the joints: Here’s another thing no other painter included. Derrick actually added caulking between all of the tongue and groove boards. If this didn’t happen, we would end up with an uneven look between all of the siding boards. Once again, completely relieved we went with such a good painter.
So, lesson learned to not always go with the low bid. You may not always be comparing apples to apples so be weary about that. Thankfully we made a great choice with Derrick. I’m not painter, but I’ll give it my best shot to go through his step-by-step prep and painting method (with pictures of course!).
Step 1: Choose a paint color. I downloaded a handy Sherwin Williams paint tool and got to work. The paint tool allows you to upload a photo then add different color options to it. At first, I tried matching the current color scheme with the white showing on the right side of the garage:

Sherwin Williams Painting App take 1

Sherwin Williams Painting App take 1
I thought it looked a little odd at the garage where the red, white, and grey all came together. I also was thinking the grey-blue was a little light. I changed up the scheme and added another photo that showed the paint color in a shaded area:

Sherwin Williams Painting App take 2

Sherwin Williams Painting App take 2

Sherwin Williams Painting App take 2
One thing I noticed is that the app doesn’t take into account the darkness of the original photo. It looks like the house is now painted two different shades of grey (not fifty….), but it is really just one. On the sides, it is painted over the original white, while the middle of it is over the original red.
However, I decided this was the scheme we wanted to go with. No more two-toned house from the front. Everything would be grey except for the trim (and the accent doors of course). I fell in LOVE with the front entry photo that I uploaded and the red was there to stay.
So, Derrick nicely picked up the paint samples and gave us some samples:

Paint samples at garage in the shade

Paint samples at garage in the sun (note the silver gutters)

Paint samples at the front door
We LOVED the grey and the white. It looked so crisp and clean together. However, we weren’t that thrilled about the red. Derrick said he wouldn’t be starting on the red for about a week, so we left that color up in the air and got started on the grey and white.
One more thing that we had to do before the painting started was to make a window in the south bedroom smaller. Remember this ginormous 12 foot long window:

Original 12 ft. long window
Well, we needed to update the window in order to accomodate the new doorway into the bedroom (long story…but this is a part 3 of our remodel project). You’ll see that work soon enough (Tommy started on it today!).
Well, here is the new 8 foot long window:

8 foot window!
It’s ridiculous to think that we have an 8 foot long window. It’s even more ridiculous to think that there was a 12 foot long window there. That is a HUGE window! Anyhow, we hired someone to replace it (DIY waterproofing…no way). Tommy took care of installing the new vertical lap siding.
FINALLY, we can move on to step 2. Step 2 was fixing the dry rot, filling in every single nail hole, and caulking between all of the boards. This ended up making the paint look smoother around the whole house:

Infilled nail holes throughout
Derrick also picked up some more accent red paint for us to take a look at. The samples are on the garage. He helped us out a lot by choosing accents he’s used before that worked well rather than me stressing over the 5,000 reds that were offered.

Infilled nail holes and more red paint samples
He also sanded and primed over the new wood siding Tommy installed:

New 8 foot window and filled nail holes
Step 2 took about 3 days. There was one guy out going around the entire house and garage filling in the holes. The next step (Step 3 if you’re keeping track) was to sand the entire house:

Sanding the house

Sanding the house
At this point, it definitely looked like we had the worst house on the street. The sanding took about 2 days, so we didn’t have to look at it like this for too long.
Step 4 was priming the entire house and caulking the joints. They also taped all of the windows to keep any paint from getting on them. This took about 3 days:

Priming and caulking the house

Taped up windows and primed entry courtyard

Primed and taped courtyard
Our windows were then taped over for about 2 weeks. He did cut some slits in them if we wanted to get any circulation in the house during this time. It would have been nice to just open some doors, but we have that pesky BIG cat that would want to escape.
This is also about the time that we had to decide between the reds on the door as well. We decided on one pretty easily. I think it is the top left one in this photo. The middle left one is the original color I chose:

Red paint samples on front door
FINALLY, Derrick started painting. This whole process took about 3 weeks from start to finish. Here are some finished photos. I’ll have more to show later when I do the before and after yard photos:

View of front

View of front house

Entryway

Courtyard and new window

Front Entry
As you can see, this was an amazing and drastic change from the dull red the house originally was. One of my favorite parts of the new color is the way the light shines through the entryway and created the fun shadows on the grey. Here’s what I’m talking about:

Front of house
You can tell there’s still blue tape around some windows, some plastic still up, and a couple of touch up locations. Derrick is coming back and going to do a walk through and fix up any locations where the paint has bubbled or cracked.
Looks like it’s not just the interior of the house that’s changing! Stay tuned for more updates from the interior…AND exterior!