a taste of the final color + materials palette
Anxious to see how all the different colors and materials would come together, we decided to go ahead and paint the gable end of the porch so we could take the plastic off the windows and door and install the house numbers. Then we walked across the street to our designated viewing location and had a little celebration of approval!
The rest of the blue is still just tinted primer, but by the end of this weekend that should all be different. The forecast continues to be in our favor, but I have a feeling this may be the last nice weekend we get for a while. The good news is that we’re on track to get most of the final painting completed. The shingle skirt is the next step, but we plan on pre-staining all sides before installing and that can happen in the carport where they’d be protected from any rain.
primed and ready to go
The priming is finally finished and a 5 gallon bucket of soot awaits us! The forecast continues to call for good weather so we’re hoping we can knock out most of the painting by the end of this weekend. Compared to the oil based primer, which is like trying to brush honey on bare wood, the latex should be a breeze. Even though we bought a paint sprayer, we decided that with enough helping hands it might be faster and more efficient to hand paint. And we wouldn’t have to worry about masking the soffits, rafters, and window trim.
We opted to only paint the outside face of the slats so last weekend we stained the interior faces. This was a bit of a chore and involved two coats and some crawling around under the porch but we’re happy with how it turned out. For the outside faces, Kyle applied the primer with a roller brush and then went back with a regular brush to even out the texture.
We also installed the future kitchen window! Of course this made us want to start tearing down the old porch/kitchen interior wall to get a better idea for how the future “great room” will feel. All in due time, that project isn’t slated till next summer.
But I bet it will be gone before then.
beginning to see the light
Quick update for now, then time to get back to work!
This past weekend was warm, sunny and productive! About 70% of the blue primer is up and most of the trim has been primed and painted. We also finally had a long enough stretch of dry, not too hot, not too cold weather to prep the ipe and apply the penofin. It’s amazing how it instantly transforms the wood with just a single coat. We’re so excited to start seeing things [finally] come together!
a new view
So much for priming and painting last weekend. The rain and drizzle were almost constant, but between short bouts of blue skies we were able to get 3 windows primed and painted. Fortunately, rain does not prohibit other activites…like demo and framing!
Even though the kitchen won’t be moving into the back porch till at least next year, we decided to go ahead and do the exterior wall part to save ourselves from having to paint now and then redo later.
The new wall to the right is where the old aluminum screen door used to be.
The siding needed to be cut back at random intervals so the new siding could be slipped in without looking obvious after it’s all painted and done.
New back door (old porch steps relocated), new integrated attic hatch above.
Old electrical “panel” on the right…the two holes to the left were boarded over but originally were screened as part of a natural ventilation food storage system (kitchen is on the other side).
In order to install the future kitchen window, we needed to demo the wall between the porch and the old bathroom/current bathroom ante room.
Framed rough opening for the new (future) kitchen window! I am standing approximately where the future kitchen sink will be.
Since the current kitchen window will eventually be eliminated, we decided to go ahead toss it and frame in the opening. We will probably put in a new window in the future dining area, but this will be located partially behind the existing kitchen cabinets to the right and we didn’t want to rip those out yet.
We found this old electrical permit in the “panel” on the back porch. It’s a permit for an electrical install from 1925!
The old porch and kitchen window are enclosed and ready to be re-sided!
The old back porch will, for the time being, become part of the pseudo mudroom/bathroom ante room. We might remove the old bathroom door and old back door to get a little more light into our now dark kitchen.
Rain or shine, we have to get this project done! New siding will be patched in next and then the last of the paint shaving, prepping, etc.
Friday, Saturday and Sunday are supposed to be warm and sunny which means we have to get some serious priming and painting done!
soot
Primer finally went up on the north wall last weekend which meant we could try out our paint samples. Below are the four finalists (they start to repeat above that). The winner…the darker blue gray at the bottom. The color is from Benjamin Moore and it’s called “soot”. We also liked how it went with the white trim paint and the dark brown windows. Check out the newly updated exterior page for more photos of what we’ve been up to. And please let us know what you think of the new site. Is there anything that’s not working, looks wonky, or is hard to read? We’d appreciate any and all input. Thanks!
We narrowed it down to the bottom two, then decided that we liked the richer, darker version best.
Thanks to the help of our awesome neighbor and professional painting expert, Deb, she and I were able to prime the north side in just one afternoon (and a big thanks to Dustin for getting the ball rolling the day before!). Even though it’s just tinted primer, it’s such a huge change already!
