My Favorite Place...In This House

The front porch. My favorite place in this house. Great place to read. Play. Drink coffee. Escape football/toddlers. You know, relax.

The more time I spent out there, the more the multiple colors of brown trim with cream walls/siding annoyed me. 

Plus, the sill's brown paint was peeling and the resident toddler was becoming more and more interested in helping that process along.

I decided that this Saturday morning would be a good to put my paint-splattered sweatpants and tee back on - after a couple year hiatus - and get back on the home-renovation horse, so to speak. 

I busted out my birthday present from the first year we lived here (actually the first month), a Dewalt palm sander. And got to work. 

 

Better right?  

Then I scrubbed the entire porch (have I mentioned that it's like 20+feet x 6+ feet?) down with TSP-PF. No pics. Because, let's face it, scrubbing is boring. It did look a lot cleaner though. A LOT.

Next came the fun part. Priming the heck out of that "chocolate" (sure...) brown sill. Gripper + paintbrush + me = happy. In case I never said this before, a good paintbrush is worth the money. EVERY. TIME. I love Purdy brushes. LOVE. THEM. They just plain do a better job. And last forever if you take good care of them. Which you will. 

After I finished the sanding/scrubbing/priming, Chris, the entertainer of resident toddler, put said toddler down for a nap and grabbed a paintbrush to start the actual painting. The trade-off of toddler/parent worked out well. You see, Chris and I complement each other. According to him, he is a missile and I have to make sure he is pointed at the right target. According to me, I am a perfectionist and if I want to be picky about the prep work I have to do it myself or keep my mouth shut. Good thing I like prep work. 

The paint's almost the same color but you can see the difference on the wall under the front window. The window with the newly painted trim from a month ago. Color? Cooper Melon by Valspar. We had a gallon of exterior satin left over from the garage trim (yeah, yeah, some day there will be a garage post). This entire project cost us...zero dollars. Well, zero new dollars. I mean, we bought all the supplies at one point. With dollars.

So far so good. I'm blogging this as the paint dries and then we can put the quarter round back on and clean up. So a complete final picture will have to wait for now.