Thursday, September 26, 2013

Painting Progress!

Well, here you go: one whole piece of the house with painting complete! Of course, this is barely 1/16th of the house actually completed but I am quite pleased with the results. You can see our three-color paint scheme here. We're contemplating adding a stripe of green to the molding around the window, however, to add some contrast - not quite sure yet.

Taking tomorrow off to continue scraping - hoping to have all of the railings and columns done tomorrow and keep working on the lattice area outside. Then, paint, paint, paint! Yippee!

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

The Great Esc(r)ape - Turning the corner

Took a half day yesterday and all day today to paint and continue scraping. It was pretty exciting to put the second coat of paint on the porch clapboards. I am really loving the color - it's interesting how the shade changes depending on the light. I was also able to put the first coat of trim paint on the porch windows and top board. It was a little too chilly, however, to put on the second coat so you'll need to wait to see the finished product. I was a bit hesitant to paint around the door mostly because I'm still not sure about the pattern and what color should go where. I decided to go with the flow for the window so hopefully it will stay somewhat similar as things progress.

As I took breaks from painting, I kept scraping. Finishing up the porch floor and working on the endless spindles on the railings. Like other projects in this nearly 100-year-old house, this one turned up an unpleasant surprise: a rotten spindle under countless layers of paint.

I'm actually amazed that the paint kept it all together as long as it did. In fact, it looks like a number of the spindles were replaced at some point as well as the lower railing (seen to the left of the scraped spindle below).


So, the millwork place in nearby Brewer will be getting a visit from us to create a new spindle.

I was happy to finally finish scraping all of the inside spindles today. Of course, the majority were scraped by Tim when he took off work last week. Tomorrow perhaps will find us finishing the outside as well. Tim wanted me to tell you that I then went outside to vacuum the lawn - many paint shavings on the grass with the Shopvac. He found this funny.

Saturday, September 21, 2013

Day 3,275 of the Great Esc(r)ape: We're Painting!

Look at that! That's paint on that there wall! I'm so excited I can hardly stand it. Seriously. I think you'd feel equally excited if you had been scraping paint for what seems an eternity. While we're not quite done with all of the scraping of the front downstairs of the house, we're ready enough to start painting. We got one coat on all of the front clapboards this afternoon and it feels very satisfying. I am also loving the color (thank goodness, right?). It's hard to tell from the photo but it's a grayish-green. We bought the crazy expensive Emerald paint from Sherwin-Williams that is also self-priming. According to random stranger passing by, we should still prime anyway but I'm going to trust that the crazy expensive paint is crazy expensive for a reason. It's funny - we get a lot of people driving by, walking by, passing by, all giving us lots of unsolicited advice. It's almost a community project at this point.

Anyway, it looks like it might rain tomorrow so probably no painting or scraping but I'm excited to see some progress that isn't just scrape-worthy.