House Painting

This week our goal was to get the High Street Rental house painted. However, the fates seemed to conspire against us and made it a very difficult task to accomplish. As of this moment, it is almost done. Fortunately, the majority of the work, and the most time consuming part is done. All that's left is to paint the trim.

Here is the house before we started to work on it. It is metal siding, and kind of a cute house. Up close you can see how flakey the pain was though. I wanted to paint it yellow. I wanted a cheery yellow. My mom said the yellows I chose would be waaaay too bright on a house. Fortunately, my cousin Liz (actually, her wonderful husband) just painted her house a lovely shade of yellow. So I copied her and went to Sherwin Williams and got a "Banana Creme" paint chip and took it to Lowe's, where they color matched it. We went with their Duramax paint, which is a primer/paint combo. Oh, and we went with the satin finish.

Tuesday, while the little girls were in preschool, Dad and I went out to scrub and pressure wash the house. It poured rain all day. It didn't matter much to us, we were washing the house, but the thunder and lightning gave us pause. Here is Dad, pressure washing the siding on the roof. You can't tell that its raining, but it is! I learned that I am way to pregnant and out of shape to be spending a morning with a scrub brush cleaning paint off a house!

Dad went back on Wednesday to start taping edges and removing windows. Since it is my rental house, I thought I ought to be helpful. I came, but had to bring all the kids because mom was gone. Here is what Dad had accomplished. It's looking a bit icky now!

Yeah, the kids were ZERO help! Look how sweaty they are too, and they are just sitting there. It was nasty hot and humid. After being no help and lots of complaining, I took the kids home. Then it rained. It rained all day on Thursday too, so nothing got done. Friday we had the water main break issue, and Dad had to work, so I got to hang out at home, waiting for the plumber, and we didn't deal with the house at all.

Finally, Saturday was a beautiful day! It was cooler, it was less muggy, it was great! Except mom was in Branson all day. So Dad went out by himself to paint. He called to say 5 gallons wasn't enough paint. So the kids and I went to Lowe's for more. We dropped it off and I tried to be of assistance. The 4 children tried as well. Dad showed them a spot to paint and they went at it with their brushes. Callie and Marian lost interest first. They discovered the scaffolding!

Joshua had a great time with the paining. He really, really wanted to paint. He loved this mini roller brush and he did a pretty good job. Then he too discovered the scaffolding.

Yeah, believe it or not, Delaney can climb up and down this all by herself! They thought they were pretty cool kids! And doesn't the side of the house look great?!

After enough trouble, I took the kids home, settled Delaney for a nap and got ANOTHER 2 gallons of paint for Dad. Mom was home about 3pm and Joshua and I went back out to paint a little trim before Dad was done. I decided to keep the trim white, and the blue shutters, because the roof and porch are a dark blue. Anyway, Joshua "helped" me paint the garage posts and I got the big front window frame painted. Wow! It looks sharp!

And here we have the nearly-done work. I think it looks great! I may not get another picture in of the completely finished product, but this is good enough! I still have to paint the door frame, about 10 more windows, the porch posts and 2 more door frames. I hope that's all! I've tired myself out now and I think I need a nap.