diy exterior paint job

Its kinda been a dream of mine to paint the outside of a house. We weren't able to do it at our last home so when Dino gave me the green light to do it myself, I didn't waste a minute! So how did I do it?

First and a really important step, is prep. Depending on the type of exterior finish you have on your home, that will determine how much prep you need. We started by pressure washing the entire house. We hired someone to do this job because I wanted to save my energy for the paint job. I found someone to do it for $400, which to me was worth it. We had zero patch work to do because our house had been painted previously in the past few years. The finish on our home was a slightly textured stucco. Not the real bumpy kind. Thats why I felt confident going in with a roller because I knew I could get in there and get smooth coverage. Which brings me to my next step.... choosing a tool to paint.

If you have a wood siding house, I would recommend spraying. You can use a roller and a paint brush but the intricate details will take a lot of time. You want to make sure not matter what your coverage is smooth and consistent. Spraying is always going to give you the best possible coverage. However; it takes a bunch of prep work which includes taping everything off. If you have a stucco home, spraying or rolling is an option. Depending on the roughness of the stucco, it could just take more time rolling it if it's pretty porous. All of the trim work was done with an angled Purdy brush, this is my favorite size https://amzn.to/2LU6aCW.

Our home is 1392 sqft. I purchased 2 five gallon buckets of paint for the base of the house which gave me two coats of paint. And I only used one gallon of trim paint.

Paint Color + Finishes

Choosing an exterior paint color is even more difficult than choosing an indoor paint color in my humble opinion. I would give yourself a few days if not more, living with the color options on different areas of the house. I had my options up for over a week and Im so glad I did because as the weather changed, the colors changed drastically. So I was able to see what the colors looked like in every light. Whites that were slightly warmer really showed their true undertone when the clouds set in the sky or it was raining.

I used Benjamin Moor Simply White in a matte finish on the main stucco of the house. I personally don't like a sheen on the exterior of a home. For the trim I did Benjamin Moore Black Top, the same as the guest house. For the trim I did in a satin finish mostly because of the ledges on them, I thought they would clean easier and be more wipeable. While my paint colors were Ben Moore, I got the colors made up at Home Depot. I used Behr Ultra exterior paint. I like this level of paint and feel it has the best coverage compared to the pricier ones. I chose Simply White because it was a bright white with a touch of warmth and when the weather changed, it didn't go yellow or pink like the other options did.

Heres a before + after of the guest house so you can see what a big difference a little paint makes!

I decided to try some stencil work out on our back step as well. That was a fun project because it was a small area that I could kinda experiment on! I used the same exterior house paint, which soaked right into the cement. Used this stencil https://amzn.to/2LSUUa5 from Amazon by first doing with black hex. I tried using a roller at first but that bled, I found a wax brush https://amzn.to/2wa9OxO that worked perfectly. After the black dried I went back over with the same stencil and the white paint. I was able to align the letters in cursive by first cutting out the letters in cursive, my mama helped with that one! We laid the letters out then simply dotted each black hex that we wanted to paint white. After it all dried I used a matte water based sealer, something like this https://amzn.to/2QaSyBW to keep it from chipping!

In total I spent around $500 on the paint, plus the cost of paying to get it pressure washed at $400. I also hired a helper to do some of the touch ups behind me at $45 an hour. This is was a fun job because I got to do it with my mom, so thankful for her and her love to get her hands dirty like me! With any paint job, its always smart to test a few colors, take your time, and not stress too much over it. While the job is a much bigger job than just painting a room, it's always best to be prepared. But in the end it is just paint so have fun with it!