How I Spent My Summer... (vacation?!)

Way back in June, we thought about what projects we'd like to work on over the summer. We decided we needed to build a new gate, replace the fence in the front yard (well, side yard, but that's being nit-picky), and we wanted to paint the porch and the front room. Pretty low-key kind of stuff. We bought the paint for the porch walls, and the front room, and the boy filled in the cracks and puttied up old screw and nail holes in the front room. That was going to be our first project. After some thought, I decided that the porch would be a quick and easy thing and we should start there. Someday I'll learn that nothing in this house is quick nor easy. Also, it's not a good idea to do major projects and try and work all summer at the same time.


Our porch is constructed of old barn board that had been stained a horrid dark brown blend of stains. Except that one wall was painted dark brown, some walls weren't painted at all and there were huge gaps in between the boards. So I started with primer, and quickly realized that I wasn't going to be able to use a paint roller. The whole porch was going to have to be done with a brush. After the first coat of primer we realized that all those gaps between the boards would look better if they were caulked first. I cant' tell you how many hours we spent getting the porch "ready" to be painted. 2 coats of primer on the walls. 3 in some water stained spots. One coat of primer on the floor, and one coat of tinted primer on the ceiling.

Oh, did I mention that while I was priming the walls the boy thought it might be nice if we went ahead and painted the ceiling and floor. I believe his exact words were "If we're going to go through all this work, we might as well do the whole thing." At the time I was grouchy. This was supposed to be a quick project. But the floor was awful and the ceiling never had been painted and had water stains from an old leak and he was right. We replaced the storm door, and I got painting.

It took 5 coats of paint to get the ceiling to "almost" the right color. It's supposed to be a bit on the redder side, but after all those hours my back was dying and it looks nice and I am happy with it. It took 2 coats of paint to do the walls... and it took 9 hours each coat to paint. My porch and I, we have an intimate bond. The floor was painted with 2 coats of Porch/Floor paint that took 48 hours to dry between coats, and then we let it dry for a week before we walked on it. When we came home from camping I went out and took off the last of the blue tape, checked to make sure it was in fact dry and put the stuff back on the porch.

Overall I am very happy with how it came out. None of the colors "quite" match the swatches I had when I started. But it's OK. They match great with each other and it looks fantastic if I do say so myself. The last photo of the corner shows the colors the best. But, depending on what time of day it is and what the light is outside, my porch has many different looks to it. Yesterday I sat out there and had lunch and enjoyed the fruits of my labor. As for the rest of projects, we have a new gate.. we're still working on getting the rough cut wood for the fence and umm.. yah that front room.. is going to wait for the fall.