The Farmhouse is White!

THE FARMHOUSE

After 6 years of dreaming about it, our Farmhouse is finally creamy white! Sherwin Williams Dover White to be precise (with Laurel Woods on the window sashes and Elephant’s Breath on the deck). We hired this massive paint job out and I have all the details to share with you today, including prep, cost, products, and more. But first, let’s have a look…

I couldn’t be any happier with how the color turned out. Eeek! I took these photos last week when we had a bit of cloud cover and smoke haze, so they feel a little darker than normal (though smoke haze is the new normal this time of year I guess), but the creamy white color feels pretty true to life.

Before

Here’s a before of the yellow, maroon, and green paint on the day we moved in. That’s our middle kiddo, then 9 months, now 7, slithering up the walk. This pic really makes me realize how much our hedges (I believe they’re Oregon grape) have grown - they’re probably 7’ tall now!

The house needed painted when we bought it in 2016. I’m not sure when it was last painted but probably 20-30 years ago. The house still has it’s original wood siding and that’s in really good condition, there was some bubbling and flaking of the paint. But we put off the job for years and so the bubbling and flaking was worse. The deck was also in dire need of a repaint

Colors

So many people have mentioned that the new color has really brought out the details. And honestly, I’m surprised just how much so. The original paint scheme highlighted the architectural elements with different paint colors and I would have thought that was the best way to really show them off. But painting everything white somehow did that better. Paint will never cease to amaze me.

Here are the colors we used…

Body + trim: SW Dover white

Window sashes: SW Laurel Woods

Deck: F&B elephant’s breath

We kept the color pallet really simple, opting for a modern-but-actually-old scheme of body and trim in white and the window sashes dark. It’s a scheme I’ve seen a lot of lately and really love. And it’s also the scheme that our house used to be, at least I think it was. I colorized a historic photo of our farmhouse, and it looks like the body and trim were a warm white and the window sashes were dark. This historic photo has been my number one inspiration for our paint job.

You can see all the colors we sampled for the body, trim, and windows here and all the colors we sampled for the deck here. In the end, I’m really pleased with all 3 colors on the exterior. And that’s saying something because getting color right isn’t always my strong suit (as evidenced by the 4 coats of paint on the Poplar Cottage kitchen cabinets ;).

Prep

To prep the house for paint, we removed everything off the exterior including screen doors, storm windows, and the bike hooks and lumber shelves on the side of the garage. We had previously pulled off the defunct cables and cords of satellites past, but if we hadn’t, we would have removed them now.  

Jose then came in and did his prep. He spent a day pressure washing the exterior and removing any peeling paint. He did a great job containing the mess with tarps and the water from the pressure washer meant there wasn’t dust. Prep really wasn’t messy like I though tit would be. He also caulked everything (including some of our window sashes, which I had him stop when I got home) and Garrett did a little siding repair near the deck.

Jose did the prep in one day when his schedule opened up suddenly and I’m not sure if he tested for lead. But in general, we do test if we’re doing anything with old paint and dry sanding it or if we’re concerned for any reason. We also wear respirators with particulate filters when dealing with old building materials and sanding or demo. You feel a bit like a hazmat responder when wearing them, but it’s better safe than sorry!

Products

Jose used Sherwin Williams A-100 exterior acrylic latex paint, in satin for the body, trim, and windows. If we had time to dwell on the sheen I would have done a bit of research on it, but Jose had it ordered before I could overanalyze. And it’s a good thing because I like the satin – it’s a bit glossier than what was here before but it’s not too glossy that it looks shiny. And the one spill we’ve had on the siding so far was easy to wipe up with a wet rag.

Jose used a “water stain” on the deck and you can read more about that here.

What it cost

We paid $13,000 + tax for the paint and labor involved. Jose also bid the porch rail at $1,500 but we opted to do that ourselves (it needed a lot of rehab and you can see more about that here). We have gotten a few other bids over the years to paint the Farmhouse and that’s pretty close to what the other’s came in at. We ended up picking Jose because (1) he was already working in our area and (2) we looked him up on google and he had an average rating over 4.5 (which is great for a contractor!), and (3) he had availably (everyone else we’ve talked to is 6 months -12 months out). We also looked Jose’s company up on our state’s contractor lookup site to make sure he was licensed and insured and in good standing before hiring him.

I can’t say I understand how painters bid an exterior paint job (guessing they rely a fair bit on experience), but for reference, our house is about 2800sf - 1800sf with 9.5’ ceilings on the main and 1000sf with 9’ ceilings upstairs. Jose estimated it would take about 60gallons of paint but I’m not sure what he actually ended up using.

Would it have been nice to paint the house ourselves and save thousands of dollars? Yes it would have. We already own a paint sprayer and we like doing work ourselves whenever possible and I think we could have done a pretty good job. But this house is big and tall and it would have taken us a lot longer to paint it than it did Jose (a month plus I’m sure). But the main reason we hired it out is because it’s a contained project that’s relatively easy to hire out, which frees up our time to work on our rentals and other remodel projects that really, really need to get finished (aka the Poplar Cottage).  

Painting historic windows

If I have one complaint with our paint job, it’s with the windows. Our house has mostly original windows (the glass was replaced with double pane but the wood is original) and many of them were painted shut with the sprayer. Jose even caulked some of them shut first. I’m pretty sure he’s used to newer windows where you can caulk the vinyl frame to the siding, but these old windows are different. Anywho, we made sure the bedroom windows can open and in the Spring we’ll come back through and address the rest of the windows, cutting any caulk and paint that hiders their operation, and install the new wood screens I ordered for them. Not a huge deal, but not ideal.

That’s all I have for you on our exterior paint job, but please ask questions if you have them! I’m just so thrilled to see this old farmhouse painted white!

xx