Sep 25, 2017

Cabin Exterior Painting Part One


I know what you're thinking: 

"What great Halloween costumes, complete with creepy diabolical facial expressions!"



But no, these are actually the super cute outfits we put on each day before scraping flaking lead paint off the outside of our cabin in order to get it ready for painting. The diabolical expressions are actually expressions of disbelief and shock, as in, "What the heck were we thinking when we took on this fixer upper!"



If the peeling layers of paint tell the story; our sixty-seven year-old cabin has only been painted a few times over all its years. Not nearly often enough. You can see from this uneven surface of previously scraped layers of paint, this isn't the first time it's gone too long without new paint. Note how the wood is cracking and rotting around the nails from exposure to water - tsk, tsk.   



We don't have the stamina to sand all the siding down to bare wood for a smooth surface, nor the funds to pay someone else to do it for us. We've been told with some TLC that we can do ourselves, though, these beautiful old boards will once again keep our little cabin weather-tight. We never even considered replacing them before their time is up - that would be wasteful.  



So we've taken on what has turned out to be quite a huge task for a couple of sixty year-olds. We're scraping off the old loose paint, priming the bare wood, caulking cracks and holes, and screwing down loose boards to prepare our cabin for fresh paint. 



Before we bought our cabin we knew this would be a DIY job. However, we had no idea just how much paint was peeling off until we actually started scraping. Hence, the look on our faces of, "oh my gosh, what have we gotten ourselves into?!?!" 



I don't get along well with ladders, so I scraped and primed the bottom halves while my husband did the top halves. He also did all the caulking. He's a wizard with a caulking gun.



The masks we're wearing are protection from breathing in lead paint dust. Each day after scraping, we carefully wrapped up the paint flakes we had let fall onto thin plastic tarps. These will be disposed of at the hazardous waste dump sight. 



There were days I almost cried over this paint scraping job. To be honest, I would think long and hard before tackling this one again, folks. But it's funny how things work out - just when you think you're going to drop from fatigue and you can't go another inch, you look up and find you're done!


Well, kind of done. 


Tomorrow we start painting!

  

(Take our cabin tour here. And to read all the blog posts about our tiny cabin in the woods, click on the sidebar photo.)

5 comments:

  1. WOW. That is a lot of hard work. Most diy is though, but worth it in the in. I cannot wait to see everything done. Be careful.

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  2. Oh boy. Fun times...not. I'm aching just thinking about it! But we do what we must do, don't we? It's going to look great and make your cabin all spiffy again! Can't wait to see the end result. Be sure to soak those tired muscles though.
    😊
    Cecilia

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  3. Cute cabin! Can't wait to see what it looks like w/ a new coat of paint on it.

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  4. It will be all worth it in the end Laurel. Your cabin is going to look brand new! xxx Maria

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