Okay, week three of the One Room Challenge! Some things have been painted.
But first. What the actual fuck, Michigan weather? Up until a few days ago it was bone-chilling cold here. We were getting highs of 53°F and lows down at frost levels every night. Mid-50s is cold for May here. Like, 15° colder than normal. And in the space of, like, two days, we are now getting highs of 90°. NINETY DEGREES. That’s 25° higher than normal. Why can we not just have some fucking spring weather? Why is it winter and then BAM! it’s summer? It’s rude! Give a lady some adjustment time, would ya.
Okay, rant over. But the reason I started with sewing projects last week was because I did NOT relish painting in 50° weather. The paint can handle those temps technically, but do not expect me to function in that nonsense—I didn’t want to paint in a winter coat, hat, and gloves. I’m not going to complain that much about 90° weather as I do much prefer summer weather to winter. But I for sure wish I could paint sweat-free in some good ole 70° weather. At least I can go plant shopping now. Hopefully we won’t get any more frost. But WHO THE HELL KNOWS at this point. (For those of you who don’t know me, I do spend a lot of my time outraged at commonplace things. Drama! It makes life more exciting.)
Tangents! They probably will be the death of me. Or this blog. Are you still paying attention?
So for years we’ve been meaning to scrape and paint the five front columns on the porch. They were in a bad state of disrepair. Here’s a close up of the before situation.
Ew. So the Man of Action decided to heat gun all the paint off of the pillars. I was pro-scraping the loose paint, but the Man wanted to be thorough. And I’m glad he did, although it took some time. Here’s what they looked like with the paint removed.
The middle column there has the paint removed. The end column shows how bad some of the paint was chipping.
When I started painting (Benjamin Moore Vanilla Milkshake to match our vinyl siding) I couldn’t believe how smooth the columns are now! They look like brand new columns. It’s game changing.
There are still some imperfections in the surface—they are old after all. But how much better does that look? Night and day.
But as we worked on the columns, I was also itching to paint the inside of the soffit at the top there. It’s covered in aluminum siding. And you can paint that really easy! No special primers or anything. I scrubbed it clean before painting, but then I just used my good old Benjamin Moore Regal Select Exterior paint. I don’t know if everyone knows you can paint aluminum siding. Judging by how many of our neighbors stopped by to ask why we were painting since we have siding, I’m going to guess no. Our house is covered in vinyl siding, but in some places, like around the windows and this porch soffit, we have aluminum siding. I don’t know if that’s commonplace or not? Or if that’s something weird the previous owners did. I’m not a siding specialist. I am a good googler, but I don’t care enough about this.
Moving on! Here are some progress shots of the paint on the soffit.
First coat there. I did two coats, but even with just one you can see how much brighter and cleaner it looks. This siding has always looked filthy even though I scrubbed it clean every year. The paint on the aluminum was fading and the darker color of the aluminum was showing through. So this new paint is just miraculous to me. It looks so clean!
Look at that difference!!!! That icky dirty-looking siding there is scrubbed as clean as it could get. It looks so gross. The new paint looks SO GOOD.
This next week we will be painting the ceiling the new grayer blue. I know it seems like we did that backwards. But because of the cold weather up until early this week, it seemed better to do the heat gunning at that time. I don’t know, it made sense to us.
I am also going to paint the picture window and front door storms black. The Man of Action was super against this at first—he does not like change. He automatically dislikes any creative thinking about the house for some reason. But I patiently pointed out other houses in our neighborhood and online that have done this and he relented. Here’s what the window looks like now.
That picture window is really busy with all the white lines and the storm windows. And once we take down the shutters, I lose any contrast there. Part of the reason we put up the shutters was to define the window more and make it seem taller. But that strategy not only slapped plastic crap up on our 1920s bungalow, but it also did not work. Look, I am human. I make mistakes. ALL THE TIME. What’s important is to learn from the mistakes, right?
Here’s a really bad photoshop mockup of this view with no shutters, no number plaque, and the storms painted black. I added the trees on either side of the main door as well. Please ignore the ladder, etc.
By painting the storm black, the window will seem bigger. At least that’s what I hope. Tune in next week to see!
