Adventures in Home Improvement: Painting the Exterior

When DH and I refinanced our house last year the assessment specifically dinged the house on it's exterior paint. The right side of the house gets full sun exposure and large swaths of paint had chipped or peeled off over the years. It was definitely time for a new paint job.

I've never been crazy about the color of the house. Grey with black shutters just seems so boring, you know? DH did all the due diligence and got 5 estimates. The one we decided to go with was the cheapest but also someone who had done work on our library three years ago.

It took about a week, start to finish and the guys were fantastic! If you live in the Charlotte area, we highly recommend Carolina’s Premier Painting Co. Our neighbors were so impressed with the transformation that one of them has already contracted to have her house painted next week.

DH actually had a week of vacation he had to use up so he took this past week off. That gave us the benefit of detailed oversight of the work. Plus, DH decided to wash and repair all of the storm windows. He also washed the interior windows and we paid the workers $50 to clean the exterior windows. 50 bucks for all those windows...it was a no brainer! My windows will probably never be this clean again. And the best part? I didn't lift a finger.

We also had the workers power wash the driveway, walkway and patio. It cost a little extra but it made such a huge difference. The driveway actually looks white now instead of a dingy gray. We plan on renting a power washer and doing it every few years.

Take a look at the before and after pictures and let me know what you think about our paint choices. It took us reviewing 5 paint samples before we decided on the final colors. I can't remember the names but if you want to paint your house the same colors let me know and I'll send you an email.

We had a large black awning over the door that was essentially crumbling when we took it down. Plus now we get extra light into the foyer which is always a good thing. Here you can see the holes that the bolts left when we took the awning down.

The painters did about 3 days of prep before they even started painting. We had 5 or 6 sofits that needed to be repaired (no, I didn't know what a sofit was before this started) and miscellaneous carpentry work. We also had them paint the storm window frames so everything was the same nice white color.