Painting Project #2--Sunporch

Do you have any ugly eyesores around your house?  There were many when we bought our house, since it was built in 1970.  There were still many reminders of the age of our house, such as an orange colored pantry, dark wood paneling and old, rusty and dirty fixtures.  One of those ugly features of our house was the old, fake, faux wood paneling on the outside of our sunporch, which had never been painted over.  The hot Colorado sun and extreme conditions had taken a toll on these walls that face south and west.  In fact, they were faded, worn out and even bowed out of shape in places.  Here are some of the ugly Before pictures:

Here's what it started to look like after priming it.

And here's how it started looking after the first coat of primer and paint on the wood.

Next, I cleaned the rusting metal braces and prepped for painting them by putting up painters tape on the windows, door handle and light.  Then I primed both the braces and the metal door by using spray paint primer.

Next I painted two coats of white paint over everything as well as some Behr celery sprig green color on the wood panel part of the door.

It took me over one month worth of weekends, since some of those weekends were interrupted with severe weather, such as hail, rain and even snow.  But, finally, last weekend I finished both coats on both walls, as well as two coats of green on the wood panel of the door.  So, here's the final AFTER pictures...

Just to compare, with the ugly before, if you had forgotten how bad it looked...

Now I'll just need to figure out how to refurbish the old, weathered, awful looking boards of the deck!  But, I've also been working on another painting project in the laundry room, since the weather turned wintry and my outdoor painting was delayed.  So, you'll just have to wait and see which DIY project I tackle next.

Painting Project 1 & Mother's Day

Lately I've been working on a couple of painting projects.  One of those is finishing up painting our basement.  If you've followed my blog in the past you may already know that I've been working on a long-term project of updating the walls of my 70's basement.     Here's what the ugly walls looked like back when I first started my painting project way back in 2013.



Here's the link to the blog entry I did last year when I painted over the ugly wheat designed wallpaper.  Good-bye to Wheat Walls

Gradually, I worked my way around the room getting all of the ugly walls repainted except for one corner behind our entertainment center.

Well, finally, I decided that the time had come to tackle that last corner.  I had put it off so long, largely because the entertainment center is SO heavy!  But after decluttering our DVD's I felt like it was time to make a new start by moving the entertainment center.  I managed to get it all moved by myself and finally finished my painting project.  So, it took at least four different phases over a period of almost 4 years, but I'm finally finished.  So, here are the photos of my last phase of the painting project in my basement family room.

And here is the room after it was all complete....

I'm so thankful that our family room is now a welcoming and bright space, rather than the dark brown cave with brown carpet, rough brown wood walls and ugly brown wheat wallpaper.  In fact, it was so dark that when we first moved in Penny was scared to go downstairs.  Now it's a great place to welcome guests, like Jay's mom who came to visit us for Mother's Day this weekend, right after I finished my first painting project.

Happy Mother's Day everyone!