Painting the Exterior of our Home – Before & After

As if I wasn’t obsessed with paint enough, this not-as-massive-as-you-would-think undertaking completely put me over the edge!

We’re going to hit our two-year anniversary in this home this week (how can it be already?!), and our exterior was way overdue for a little bit of love. We’ve worked diligently on freshening up the interior since day one, so it was time to make our outdated exterior match.

I knew that we couldn’t afford to hire someone to paint the entire exterior, but the idea hit me last summer that maybe, just maybe, we could tackle the trim. The house’s beige paint is actually in relatively excellent shape, but the burgundy trim was ready for a makeover. We decided that when Jamie returned from his deployment that we would focus on our exterior, consisting of the fence, back deck, trim, shutters, and doors.

Painting Our Home Exterior: The Before and After Transformation

Here’s a picture I snapped of our home on closing day in September 2014.

And here’s how things looks around here today!

I painted all of the windows, door frames, gutters, and drain spouts that were low enough that I could hit while standing on a six-foot step ladder. All areas higher than that we left to a professional. I also painted the shutters, which was an incredibly quick job!

I bought more modern house numbers, but I have a little DIY project I want to make with them to put on the house.

Jamie devoted a weekend back in June to painting our fence with his paint sprayer. You can read a detailed post about that process here.

Jamie knocked out painting all three of our exterior metal doors and did an excellent job. I briefly looked into purchasing a brand new front door (because I’ve always heard that attractive front doors increase your home value quickly), but the cost of the doors I was interested in would have cost us more than this entire exterior transformation did.

When I see these before and after pictures of our porch, I can’t believe we waited as long as we did to update our exterior. This blue front door makes me swoon!

Unfortunately we haven’t gotten around to refinishing our deck yet, but we’re figuratively out of gas project-wise and will tackle our deck first thing next spring (it’s in rough shape, but we sure do use it and enjoy it.)

I really love how the color on our front door turned out, so I asked Jamie to paint our back door the same color as well. It’s such a bright, whimsy color that helps make our back deck feel more welcoming and homey.

Both the front door and this side door had storm doors on them when we closed on the house, and both of them were in pretty rough shape. Jamie removed the front storm door right when we moved in, but this side storm wasn’t removed until a couple weeks ago. Jamie used wood filler to repair the frame, did a solid sanding job, and then I gave it a couple fresh coats of paint.

I knew going into this project that I needed to axe any expectations that I had for completing this project quickly. Though this wasn’t a difficult project, it was tedious and required attention to detail. I started painting the burgundy trim the third week in June and worked between 20 and 60 minutes five days a week.

I would literally paint one coat on one window while Sadie hung outside in her bouncer and Hadley played in her water table, and as soon as one of them was ready to go inside, I washed my brush and called it quits. I told myself from the beginning that I needed to give myself grace on this project because these two girls deserve my time the most. I also didn’t expect Jamie to come home from work and take away time from the girls to paint.

Sometimes I would paint in the morning if we didn’t have an outing already planned, but usually I would paint in the afternoon right before Jamie got home.

We knew that we needed to increase our home’s curb appeal, but neither of us realized just how far a little bit of paint would go. I’m hopeful that we’ve increased our home’s value and that we’ll have some happy potential buyers in a couple years when we sell.

FYI: Here’s a breakdown of how much this transformation cost us (minus the fence).

Three gallons of white paint: ~$138

One quart of blue door paint: ~$16

One quart of black shutter paint: ~$7

Professional labor to paint high portions of the home: $400

Total: ~$561

And this is why I love painting projects so much. The transformation can be drastic while the price tag can be relatively small.

Paint color details

White trim paint (also used on the side door): Behr Marquee Exterior Satin Enamel in Ultra White

Light blue front and back door paint: Sherwin William’s “Waterscape” in a satin finish

Black shutter paint: Rust-Oleum Ulta Cover Premium Latex Paint in “Flat Black” (Note: The paint looks bright navy blue when you open the can, but it dries solid black.)

Beige house paint: Behr Premium Plus Exterior Semi-gloss Enamel’s “Farmyard”