Exterior color...revealed!

Remember this post where we asked your opinion on which color we should paint on the exterior of our house? Well...it's time to show you what we chose...

Dark Gray! And we l.o.v.e it!!

 

Sadly, we're not done yet. This project is taking FOREVER! We decided to save some money and diy the painting. On the one hand, each time we go out with our paint brushes we are happy about the fact we're saving $1500+ doing it ourselves...but on the other hand, we are SO SICK of painting and wish we could hire someone to finish it. The pictures on this post show the not-quite-finished job. The trim is done but the gray areas still need another coat. (and we've only been able to paint as high as we can reach so far)

But we get major encouragement when we see the before and afters. Yahoo!
What used to look like this from the front:

Now looks like this: (remember to just look at the house...the yard and landscaping are trashed right now)

And here's the difference in looking at the side of the house.

Back to the painting process...
We have spent days painting. Whoever had the idea of using shakes all over the house was insane! Oops...it was me. And yes, it was insane. It looks gorgeous but the process is extremely tedious. Here's why:
There are tiny little grooves everywhere that can only be painted with a one inch brush!

Yes, yes, we know...it could probably be sprayed a little faster. But we're cheap! We have a paint sprayer but were told that you need about 20-25% more paint when you spray because of all the wasted over-spray and paint that gets stuck in the sprayer. (and paint is expensive with a capital $Cha-ching so 25% would be several hundred dollars worth of paint) Plus, even if we sprayed, we'd have to use a little brush to make sure the paint gets crammed in every little nook and cranny.

Last weekend we made a lot of progress on the back of the house. It was encouraging to look over from where I was hard at work painting and see this progress:

And then completely deflating to look up and see that half of the back is still completely untouched:

Grrrrr. Guess what we'll be doing this Memorial Day weekend?

The kids love when we paint because they get to play outside for the entire day. Although this little guy will be glad when we're done since he gets in trouble constantly for touching the wet paint. Poor baby.