A Prepped and Primed Porch is a Happy Porch

Steve and I have a nice balance as a team. Steve is very concerned with doing things precisely. I, however, have a more "good enough" attitude. Steve by himself could be driven to distraction by details. By myself, I would never take the time to do things properly, as long as they function. Together, we find a good balance of allowing for necessarily imperfect yet still high quality work.

The main lesson from this weekend's project is that any painting endeavor takes about 3x as long as I think it should.

Steve and I started by preparing our front porch and back steps for primer. This entailed sanding the entire surface and repairing imperfections with wood filler.

Steve sands the back steps:

I use a putty knife to apply wood filler (which Steve later sanded) to the front porch:

Next we moved on to adding some additional architectural detail to the front porch. We weren't happy with the appearance of the base of the old support columns.

Old column base (Steve is so disgusted, he can't even look at it):

Off to Home Depot. We found some pre-primed exterior grade molding that we really liked. Of course, to cut these things properly you need... a brand new miter saw!

Molding cut to size, Steve attached the pieces to the base of the columns with exterior finish nails (tapped in with his brand new nail set) and filled the gaps with wood putty. Much better.

These preparations completed, we swept the surfaces clear and were ready to prime.

I prepare a paint roller (using a lint roller to remove loose fibers so they don't shed onto the painted surface):

Priming the back steps:

Back steps complete (well, first coat anyway):

We ran out of daylight before we could finish, but here's the progress on the front porch:

I find the painting somewhat therapeutic and don't mind the work at all... but it does take a lot of time. We'll continue our work throughout the week to complete the priming.

We don't plan to paint the final colors until the contractor has completed work. The colors we have chosen are similar to those on the house already: a deep reddish brown for the treads and deck surfaces, a brighter maroon-ish red for the handrails, a dark slate-ish blue for the risers and some rail detail, a sage-y green for additional rail detail and a soft white for the balusters. The newel posts (currently that lovely shade of puke yellow) will be primarily white with detail of multiple colors (like the existing columns). We will paint over the old trim detail with our new colors, which should freshen everything up. We are not going to repaint the main house right away... but we'll certainly be saving up for that project to happen in the future.