Gearing up for the Paint Job

Today Karren pulled half the gutters and all three satellite dishes off the house while I got self absorbed in trying to straighten out the garage. She fought with the bees that were nested in the dishes and I fought the never ending fight with gravity, keeping boxes from falling down off the stack (I always seem to lose fights with gravity). The Big G is my nemesis.

We are going to remove the rest of the guttering tomorrow and get started powerwashing the house in preparation for the painting. Yesterday we removed the rest of the HATEFUL juniper bushes and drug them into the field out back. the house is beginning to look much better even without the new paint.

For those who would like to know, I ordered the paint from our local Ace Hardware dealer, who happens to be the only Benjamin Moore dealer in this area. I have painted lots of things in my day and I have settled on Ben Moore paints as being the best on the market. If you are going to pay over $35 a gallon for premium paint anyway, you might as well get Ben Moore paint. It is the best looking and has the best longevity of any paint I have used. I've tried Duron, Sherwin Williams, Porter, Behr, and Olympic, and rate them in order of preference, best to worst. Ben Moore's premium house paint is called "Ben" and is really good stuff. If you are in a more developed area you can also use their commercial grade, "Super Spec," which is almost as good and is slightly cheaper.

The house must be primed because I am changing the color from gray to a dark brown. There is also some spot priming to be done because there is a lot of bare wood showing due to plants rubbing and such. Lots of flaking as well and this will require steel brushing and scraping. There is virtually no paint left under the gutters which necessitated their removal, but they were rusting through so no loss there.

The roof is going to be replaced but I have not gotten firm bids on material for a standing seam metal panel roof yet. This will be interesting as I have never installed one of those yet, but am willing to give it a go! The only thing that has me scratching my head is how to do the cricket for the chimney?

I'll post a pic of the place before and after the paint. Be sure to check back!