Exterior Painting Progress

Paint colours (from top): hiking trail CC 514 (porch, fascia, and eaves), chelsea gray HC 168 (brickwork), frontenac brick CC 182 (gable ends and soffits), kendall charcoal HC 166 (window sashes)

In mid-July we began to transform our house exterior with paint. We've gone from an ivory elephant with bright yellow and coral accents to a more stately and smaller (we hope) neutral gray elephant with darker gray window trim, warm brown fascia and eaves, and brick coloured gables and soffits. Although the job is still far from finished, the mood of the house is completely transformed. I'd like to say that neighbourhood feedback (direct, overheard, and rumored) has been uniformly positive, but in truth I think the comments are about 80 percent in favour, 20 percent against. This is probably a good average in a diverse and recently historically designated neighbourhood. Some people just don't like change. In the winter I wrote that we would probably paint the house ourselves, but after contemplating the massive undertaking--our house is a three story Victorian and requires a 40 foot ladder to reach its peaks--our enthusiasm waned a little and we hired a one-man painting company.

The previous paint colours revisited

When I read on his website profile that he was an accomplished rock climber, I knew he was our guy. In addition to no fear of heights, he had insurance, a commitment to safe practice, and fantastic work ethic. The deal we struck was that he would prep and paint all of the third story wood trim, windows, gable ends, and get as much of the lower two stories, especially the parts most visible from the street done in the five weeks he had before moving on to another job. We would paint whatever trim remained as well as the windows on the on the first and second floors. To help him in his time limited task he hired two assistants: one a champion lacrosse player, one an aspiring singer songwriter with girlfriend problems. I'll leave it to you to guess who was the more efficient. Prepping the woodwork took almost two full three-person weeks. We never could have handled this job on our own. And yet, the job is only mostly done. Some crucial areas, like the windows on the second story front sunroom, remain incomplete.

Our well-tended sash brushes--it's taken years, but N has finally convinced me of the value of good brush husbandry

Since we returned from our vacation we've been ready to proceed with the job and finish at least the most visible bits of the house before autumn denudes us of the cover of foliage and the paint job is on full display. But the weather seemed bent on foiling us. Although the tail end of Ike didn't hit us with the full predicted deluge, the (available) days of early September were wet and cold. N, who once painted with a good painting company in north Toronto between school terms, said that with nighttime lows under 10degrees C, the paint wouldn't properly cure and we were about to abandon hope. But this is where new technology came to our rescue.

Benjamin Moore's new Aura paint

It turns out that the paint we chose to use, Benjamin Moore's new Aura paint, only available in Canada since July, requires temperatures of only 4.4 degrees Celcius (around 40 F). This means despite the chilly evenings we have no excuse not to finish the job. The recent weather has turned in our favour and now we are hopeful about finishing. And a bit more about our paint: in addition to allowing cold-weather application, Aura is one of the lowest VOC paints on the market. It goes on beautifully and smoothly, much more easily than Farrow and Ball paints (except for oil). Its coverage is very good--last weekend N prepped and painted the sunroom windows previously ivory, now slate gray, in one coat, with no primer. We skipped the primer step for expediency, but really, the coverage is so complete you'd never know.

the house wearing its new paint colours, east view

We took a long time choosing our colours because we knew our final choices would be very public. In our pedestrian friendly neighbourhood, nothing escapes comment. Because our brick was already painted, we had fewer limitations on our choice of palette. After cruising around many neighbourhoods to decide what look we liked, we consciously chose a low contrast scheme which relies on tensions between warm and cool colours of the same value rather than the more common high contrast exterior paint schemes. The palette seems to unify the house and bring out the textures of the wood trim, shingled gables, and the brick. For the first time in years, the house looks of a piece. N even admits that the new paint job has changed his mind about the 1940's tudor-style sunroom addition above the front porch that he's often talked about tearing down. We are especially happy with the dark window trim which recedes into the facade rather than standing out (this is an especially good feature on the upper floors where we still have some ugly aluminum storm windows). One thing that bothers us about many home exteriors is the default use of white for windows and trim. As a considered choice, white can look perfect: crisp and clean, but other times the white is far too stark against the rest of the house. Victorians often painted the window sashes dark colours to reduce the contrast between the black voids of window glass and the trim. Our preparations for painting revealed that our wood trim and and windows have been a very dark, almost black, green, a deep red, dark brown, mustard yellow, and in more recent years, tan, pink, and pale yellow. Now, they are a deep slate gray. The house looks good to us right now. I hope we feel the same way about it in mid-winter.

Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most

The maples look bare, but their buds are beginning to swell

Today felt much more like spring, at least for a while. The temperature climbed to 11 degrees C and it’s been raining—truly raining. The birds are singing again and the snow is retreating, but at a glacial pace (although these days that expression could mean anything). With the disappearance of the snow, some unpleasant things are returning to view. Besides the unmentionable signs of animals, there are piles of sawdust from late November outdoor table saw use; the garden hose, which we carelessly left on the lawn to freeze; a stack of those green plastic lawn chairs, which we had meant to donate to charity (assuming anyone wants them) last year, but didn't; the wooden skid that our tile was transported on; mats of wet leaves, crushed boxwood shrubs from our new hedge, which managed to get trodden on when it disappeared under the snow; hundreds of fallen twigs and branches from the sugar maples; a tangle of perennial stalks, piles of bird seed and sunflower shells like dark stains under the feeders, brown boughs that looked so lovely when they were first stuffed into hanging baskets and urns in December, the carnage left by the snowplow on our median strip of grass, peeling paint, and leaking eaves troughs. You get the ugly picture.

Just one of the discouraging scenes revealed by retreating snow

Spring is at once so welcome and so cruel. I can hardly wait for the lush green that will inevitably come, but right now the brighter light from a higher sun makes everything look impossibly dingy. The ground will be so wet from the snow this year that it may be quite a while before I can get out and take stock without permanently compacting our soil. Last year, by the last week of March, the snow had long since disappeared and I was out and cleaning things up. Except for ferocious bouts of snow shoveling, we have been indoors for four and a half months. Renovations prevented us from embracing the winter like we have other years (skiing and igloo building were past pursuits). I can’t wait to be outside again.

Current house colours (left), possible future colours (right)

This year we plan to paint the exterior of the house. Our house is painted brick (we bemoan this fact constantly, but can’t undo it) with a ton of wooden trim. When we first moved in we put aluminum storm windows on the second story and attic windows—I know, I know, ugly and non traditional—but we did it because of the danger and awkwardness involved in removing and replacing the heavy wooden storm windows every spring and fall, and because we don’t have air conditioning and so require screens. It was a practical decision, but not the best one aesthetically. Now that we’re going to repaint, we’ll have to figure out a way to paint aluminum windows, which are currently a creamy yellow and will become dark grey or brown.

Our front walk, in herringbone clay brick and square cut sandstone

Last year we had a painting company bid on painting the house and the estimate made our jaws drop. Though I won’t say what the actual amount was, let me just say that it amounted to nearly one fifth of our initial purchase price of the house. We said no and are trying to gear up to do the work ourselves. This will mean the purchase of scaffolding and who knows how many days of toil. I feel defeated just thinking about it.

The colour palette for the house will change substantially. Currently we have a new roof in a weathered wood colour, ivory painted brick, slightly darker cream window frames, a mid-brown neutral for porch, fence, gate, and window trim, bright yellow gable ends and soffits with a bright orangey-red accent. For the new paint colours, we hope to tone things down a bit, visually shrink the size of the house, and have the gables and soffits seem more a part of the whole. Our future palette constants are the roof and the mid-brown colour pictured above on the front steps. We want to paint the brick a medium neutral grey, the window frames a darker grey or brown, the soffits and gable ends a less intense brick colour (to pick up the brick and sandstone colours in the landscaping). We would love any feedback.