Progress on the Exterior - Primed before Winter

I can't believe we never shared where we left off before our lovely New England winter on the exterior painting project.  As much as it would have felt great to get color on the house, we stopped at fully priming the back side of the house.  Priming before winter was a must, thought we will need to do it again in the spring before color because exterior primer is only good for 90 days before a final paint coat is applied.  

Here is the updated to do list broken down:

Project List:

• Scrape any old paint that will come off
• New paint colors selected
• Finish the never ending scraping
• Replace any broken shingles
• New flashing above lower window
• New PVC window trim
• Sand all cedar shingles
• Flash AC unit
• Wash, brush, dry house
• Prime everything - 75% complete as of 11/11
• Correct bad flashing job on porch roof (wait until spring when we hire a pro and do a new roof here anyway)
• Final coat of paint (if this can't happen, we'll need to prime again in the spring)

Remainder of the Exterior Paint Project List for 2014:

• Continue with Side 2 (scrape/strip paint, repair, sand, clean, prime, paint
• Continue with Side 3 (scrape/strip paint, repair, sand, clean, prime, paint
• Continue with Side 4 (scrape/strip paint, repair, sand, clean, prime, paint
• Paint all trim
• New fascia boards along eaves
• Install faux eave brackets
• Accent trim and eave bracket detail with third trim color
• Stain front railing (completed in 2012!)

Below is a reminder if our choice tools on this side of the house and we've added information on the painting products we went with:

Scraping Tools:

Huskey bend scraper - Matt's choice 

Huskey 14 in 1 tool - Meg's choice

Safety Glasses - we wear safety glasses alot around here, splurge and get yourself a good pair.  These are Meg's favorite.

Scraping Update: Scraping was the hardest of the three main tasks (scraping, sanding, painting) for this project. We read about an environmentally safe paint stripping product that we are planning on trying this spring.  Honestly, even it if doesn't work we can't skip at least trying to possible save us from this grueling task again.

Sanding Tools:

DeWalt orbiting sander - best sander for the job!

The Mouse - only used for the hard to reach spots

Dry Brush

Safety Masks & of course safety glasses again - we're using protective respirators rated for harmful dust.

Sanding Notes: sanding honestly wasn't that bad and only took a day for two of us to complete. I think the care we took to sand well, and then clean up all the dust and debris after will help out paint job last a very long time.

Priming/Painting Tools:
California Paint 2010 Acrylic Exterior Paint
California Paint Trouble Shooter acrylic primer
4" wide synthetic brushes
Safety Glasses & Hats: when working with paint on something as awkward as a house, safety glasses and a hat to protect your hair is a very good idea.  This gets just about as messy as painting a ceiling.

Painting Notes: So far we've only primed which is a MUST before winter to protect the home from excess moisture.  We will prime it again in the spring, but we were able to complete one side with two people in a 10 hour day.  Why aren't we spraying?  So many people have asked us this question.  For one, our house is not very big and honestly the time it would take to tape everything off would almost equal the handwork we did.  Second, some sprayers would need us to thin the paint and we didn't buy the best just to add water to it.  And third, with our old and textured cedar shakes we'd need to back brush the entire thing anyway.

If you liked this post, check out the others regarding our Exterior Paint Project:
- Getting Started
- Scraping