Our house exterior needs some major L.O.V.E. It’s a big project that’s been on our minds since the day we moved it. Currently, it is a tanish-orange color:

I lovingly refer to our house as the big bluh box. It’s grodie, it’s cracked, and lacks personality. The rust brown trim on the orangie tan siding just isn’t my taste. You may recall my exterior visions from this old post. I envision a light green (almost white) siding with white trim, and black shutters all around. Of course, we need to add new landscaping, gutters, and eventually a new roof. This is what I’m picturing:

Time to make this dream a reality and finally have the outside of our house match it’s lovely inside. I’m tired of having people pull up to the house with frightened looks on their faces. I’m happy so see their relief when they step inside the house, but I’m tired of the “I wasn’t expecting this on the inside” comments! LOL. So first things first- David had to replace the icky rotted front soffet. If you look back at the original house photo you can see the rot starting on the left side of the house. That photo was taken 4 years ago, so you can only imagine how bad it looks now. 

Then we sprayed the house with some anti-mildew cleaning stuff. Then we got to painting. After debating a few color choices, we ultimately chose Pale Pine for the siding and Farm House White for the trim. Both are from Home Depot:

Next we repaired all the stucco cracks. There was a huuuuge crack where the stucco side met the brick front.

Don’t know if I did that right, but I believe it will do the trick. I even added some of the stucco fixer to the brick to fill in cracks and continue the texture:

Once painted over, it all looked good. We started with the bottom left side of the house. I just used a roller, and man-oh-man it was tough going. The stucco had so much texture that it slurped up the paint and I really had to press into it. It was physically tough to paint.

Here’s how the first portion turned out:

I wasn’t so sure I loved it.

So I walked away. We took a few days off and just thought about it. After a little research and some faith, we decided to move forward with the color. This time, we decided to use the paint sprayer.

Getting the paint thinner and the water and paint proportions just right is tricky. In fact, that might be the hardest thing about the paint sprayer. Once you got that down, then it moves along pretty quickly. My only advice is to make sure the grass and windows and such is covered because paint mist gets everywhere! Now moving on to the front of the house:

I painted the right side of the house with a roller since it has that awkward bay window box thing and David sprayed the bottom left. 

Then David painted the upper portion. I was fried at this point- so this was a one man show. I dedicated myself to being a good paint assistant by bringing the drinks. This is what it looked like when I stepped out the front door:

And here’s how the front turned out:

Next weekend, David is going to build and install the black shutters and maaaaybe the planter window boxes. Stay tuned to see us transform our home into this beauty:

Wish us luck in the Texas heat!