Hooray — we’ve gone gray! 

No, I’m not talking about our hair color beginning to fade as a result of nearly eight months of home renovation (although, the lone long-locked Newton has noticed a few new silver strands). We have finally said goodbye to the patchwork shingles and painted the exterior of our house! We settled on a medium gray color for the cedar shakes and then called in reinforcements to help with the transformation.

The slightly more senior Mr. and Mrs. Newton (Matthew’s parents) joined the painting party and we were able to prime and paint the exterior of our little nest in two weekends’ time. Not too shabby for a bunch of amateurs—well, three amateurs and our fearless leader, Matthew’s father, Wayne, who owned his own paint contracting business for 30+ years… as the sole professional on site, he kept the rest of us from messing anything up! Painting all those shakes was no easy task and start-to-finish it took us a month of weekends if you count the prep work too, but we were strutting around with grins of accomplishment when it was all done!

We began by prepping the exterior (a lot more work than I thought!):

Here we go! Check out the power of a coat of paint:

Oops! We almost forgot the garage…

 

Many, many thanks to the Newtons for helping us with such a big job – we couldn’t have done it without them!!!

A few Eggs of Wisdom…

• It’s true, many hands make light work.
• Happy music and time with family makes even the hardest jobs more fun.
• If you have a choice between rolling/brushing paint and using one of those handy sprayers, choose the sprayer every time! 😉