Easy Home Makeover Projects: Part 1 – Painting The House

In the past several weeks I’ve alluded to all the home improvement projects we’ve been working on. Now my husband I are getting ready to share some of those. I say my husband and I because in the future we’ll be having some contributing posts from Mr. Simply Sweet Home on his fields of expertise, and believe me, when it comes to tools and fixing things, it’s definitely his field of expertise and not mine.  But as long as he thinks that I look cute trying, I feel good about it!  And believe me, I DO TRY!

I decided to make this part of a series on Easy Home Makeover Projects.  When it comes to home improvement, I find that a little goes a long way, and when you look at your home and try to divide the work in to a series of small projects here and there, rather than looking at it as one big never ending project, it definitely makes the work easier, and it takes all the pressure off!

Grey PorchToday we’re about painting!  This is one project that I had absolutely had no trouble helping with.  Please note that I said “helping.”  I definitely wouldn’t hire me to paint anything ever!  But I’ve certainly tried my best.

 Last year we actually got started with this project.  We had only the posts on the porch and no rails.  The shutters were grey and the floor of the porch was nasty and chipped.

Here’s a “porch makeover in progress” photo that I posted last year:

Porch-Makeover-in-Progress

Funny enough, I was sick when Gary was putting the rails up, so I didn’t get a full view picture of the house with no rails and completely unpainted, but I think you can see the chipped, ugly floors above!  And here is the floor freshly painted.

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For the porch floor, we used Glidden Porch Paint in Dark Grey.  We got this at Walmart for about $25.  The floor was painted with a roller and then I brush painted around the edge.

We did run out of time last year and never put on a second coat, so we’ve been doing that this summer. You definitely need at least 2 or 3 coats, especially in areas that get high traffic or that are exposed to weather, but otherwise, this paint has really good coverage and looks great on our porch.

Here’s the porch WITH rails.  I love these! It makes the place so much more cozy.  And of course, we used your basic white exterior paint on the rails, posts, and other trim work.

 Porch with Rails

And……DRUM ROLL.  Here is the painted house!

House Makeover

I still have some a few little finishing touches to do here and there, but I love this!  At first I was torn between red and grey.  I thought about using a darker grey on the shutters, because it’s in style, and I’m just loving grey these days, but at the end of the day, I had to get something different!

For the red paint color, I wanted something close to crimson (so we could show our Crimson Tide spirit).  I purchased a quart of Glidden Paint.  The color is California Claret, and we got the satin finish.  This quart was enough to put 2 coats of paint on my shutters and other trim work, and it cost less than $15 at Home Depot!

House

 I hate to use a clique, but this red really does POP!  The new paint really makes everything look so vibrant and new!  Every day I’m excited to walk in and out of my house and see this.   And this best part is, we were able to do all the work ourselves at a minimal cost!

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Comments

  1. Very cute!

    Question – when paining your shutters did you take them down and do it? Any suggestions. We just moved into a house with vinyl shutters that need an update.

    • Great question Melanie! We actually left ours on the house and just used painter’s tape to tape them off. Taking them off would certainly make the painting part easier but it would have obviously taken longer to remove the shutters and put them back on, and since we live in kind of an older house, we didn’t want to risk compromising the integrity of the shutters or the house (leading to even more repairs!), so just leaving them on the house suited us.

  2. Looks great!

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