Beginning the House Painting Slog

Here is Tim, beginning what will surely be months and months of scraping and painting the house. Yes, after much deliberation (MUCH), much hemming-and-hawing, and discussing strategy, around 3pm yesterday Tim decided we should just start. We ran to Home Depot and purchased what is aptly called the PaintEater. What you're seeing in the photo above is about 20 minutes of work. After that point, Tim switched to the strategy of smoothing down the bumpy paint and smoothing what was there.  He pretty much got all the way down the side of the house after about 2 hours. Still, phew. It's going to be a slog.

While he was happy with his work, shortly after he started feeling sick. After removing his lead paint-safe mask, I saw paint dust all around his nose. I think we're going to need to switch strategies, switch tools, and switch face masks. I'll probably end up buying the SpeedHeater infrared paint remover - one recommended by This Old House. It's a lot more expensive than the thing we bought at Home Depot but won't create dust.

In more fun news, we're closer to picking out a color combination. We know that this house was originally a three-color house per a 1933 assessor's photo we have. At some point, however, the house was switched over to all white, except for the window muntins. We're planning to revert back to that 3-color scheme, focusing on a greenish-gray for the overall color, a cream for the trim, and a darker greenish-gray or tan for the accents. There are some nice Sherwin-Williams brochures on historic color combinations and we like Chatroom/Muslin/Beach House or Rare Gray/Casa Blanca/Pewter Green.

As we get deeper into this interminable project, I'll certainly update.