My house has been in desperate need of a paint job. When I bought it, things were patchy and sad, but not bad enough to move from “I want to paint it” to “I need to paint it”. Fast forward several years, and once I moved back in it was obvious that the paint had gotten bad enough that the siding was starting to take some damage. Painting is a huge expense, and one I considered putting off even longer, but getting it over with was so worth it. My house feels like new, and I think it looks like a million bucks. Bonus: part of painting involves knocking down all the wasp nests.

I priced out several companies around town, and ended up going with College Pro. I like that it’s all students getting useful work/management experience, everybody is local, they brush & roll instead of spraying (according to my super-pro painter stepmom, the paint has to be thinned to go through the sprayer, so brush & roll is always the way to go), and they were almost $1000 cheaper than the other estimates. The whole process was really straightforward, and once we got started the entire process only took a week. Keaton, Nick, and Hayden did a great job, and I’m really, really happy I decided to say goodbye to so much money to get this done. Yay, adulting!

Getting your house painted is a bit strange, especially when you work from home. It definitely felt a bit like living in a fishbowl, and I started getting up and dressed every day to fool the guys into thinking that I don’t live in the same sweats and tshirt combo. It also felt weird to sit around inside while people were outside baking in the sun doing manual labor for me. Can I make them lunch, take them a tray of lemonade, or ask them if they want to come inside into the shade for breaks? In the end they didn’t need any of that, and I just shared a round of congratulatory beers with them at the end of the job.

Here’s the steps:

1. Pressure wash.
2. Sample colors.
3. Scrape/prime. (Technically they only prime exposed/trouble spots, but most of my house ended up getting a near-complete coat of primer.)
4. Paint main color/garage.
5. Paint trim/doors.
6. Revel.

Thanks to everyone who weighed in on my sample color options on Facebook/Instagram. I was leaning toward the dark grey from the beginning, with the blue as my second choice, which is exactly what everyone on the internet said. Good job reading my mind!

So without further ado, a fancy time lapse and some pics. (Please ignore my horrible wasteland of a yard. I’m working on it.)

Timelapse, complete with dogdog the job supervisor.

Pressure washing.

Paint samples. There are four, but the top one is almost exactly the same color as the existing paint.

I cleaned several years worth of dead bugs off all the lighting fixtures while they were down.

Oh heeeeey.

The north side of my house gets the least exposure, but took the longest to paint because it’s covered in vents and wires (there are a bunch more on the other side of the fence). Even though I said it was ok, the guys aren’t allowed to paint over that stuff, so they had to neatly go around/lift up every single one of the million things on this wall.

Roof harness. Safety first!