Cabin Exterior Painting Part Two

Happy October, everyone! I hope you're all enjoying a bit of mild fall weather by now. Here in McCall, Idaho it's been cloudy, raining and even snowing a bit. The sudden weather change caught us off guard, and we found ourselves scrambling to get one coat of paint on our cabin before the nights dropped to below freezing. 

Paint won't set up and cure properly if it's applied when it's too cold, and we sure as heck didn't want to be scraping and priming again next spring if our new paint job failed. So, even though we thought we started plenty early with the scraping, caulking, and priming, we suddenly found ourselves with only two warm days left to paint before our roofers were scheduled. Each of those two days the temperature was right for painting for only about seven hours. We painted as fast as we could, rolling the paint onto the horizontal siding in sections with four inch rollers and then going over that with our brushes. 

We just barely got all the cabin siding done before the roofers showed up and we had to quit. They used up the last two warm dry days installing our new roof, and now with freezing temperatures forecast for every night, our painting days are over. The rest of the cabin, along with the entire garage, will have to wait for next year. Our paint salesman told us we won't get as good protection from two coats of paint spaced so far apart as we would if the second coat was applied now, since they won't bond as well, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. We'll keep our fingers crossed that what's done so far will hold up over the winter, and if not, we'll deal with more scraping and priming when the time comes. 

We're chalking up our mistake to being newbie Rocky Mountain cabin owners who had no idea how fast the warm 80 degree summer transitions to a cool wet 50 degree fall with freezing nights. It's really fast!! Of course we're disappointed that our cabin doesn't look very good right now wearing both new and old paint with lots of patches, but we're relieved to have at least one good coat of paint protecting our walls for the upcoming winter.

Oh, and we did think about hiring someone to finish painting for us, but every single painter was already employed and hustling to finish their own jobs. We've added that to learning about living in a tiny town in the mountains - hire your subs the season (or even the year) before you need them!

So, today, we'll show you just a few photos, a tiny sneak peek, of the new paint. Our completed Cabin Exterior Painting Part Three blog post will have to wait until... well, maybe until next summer after it warms up again and we can finish painting!

Before (blue) and After (red)

Here's the new red paint color on the cabin next to the old blue paint color that's still on the garage. Our goal was to make our little cabin appear warm and welcoming while also having it blend in more with its surroundings. We wanted it to be hidden in the trees at first glance, but once discovered, to have a happy and friendly feeling - like coming across a little surprise deep in the woods. We think we've accomplished that so far. 

Before

We also wanted to take our little cabin from the cute lake cottage vibe above to a more rustic forest cabin vibe. 

After

So far, looking past the unpainted trim and windows, we love how happy, warm and welcoming our cabin looks with its new red paint. This red is a color match from a sample of Home Depot's Behr red Barn and Fence paint by our McCall Sherwin-Williams store in their satin finish Emerald paint line. We're still working on choosing trim, shutter and window box paint colors that help create a more rustic look. At first we were leaning towards creamy white, but we found that looked too cottage-y for us. Now, we're experimenting with darker shades of green, brown, and tan. 

We removed the shutters for painting, but they'll be going back on again along with the window boxes. After giving it a lot of thought we're going to replace the sail boats on the shutters with pine trees. But don't worry, we had to promise our kids we'd keep the sail boats safe for them to replace when they inherit our cabin because they love them a little more than we do. 

So, that's it for today! Just a tiny peek at our new paint. The next big change for our cabin that I'll be sharing is our new roof. (We love it!)

    

Read all about prepping our cabin for paint here.

Take our cabin tour here.

Read all of our cabin blog posts here.

  

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.)