House Projects: Painting Siding

Eight days ago, I went to Menards and picked up some "house wash" and a scrub brush to help clean some of the grime off our house. One thing led to another (cleaning, then power washing, then scraping, then a trip to Sherwin Williams), and I found myself painting parts of our metal siding the next day. Here's some areas that looked rough on the west side:

Paint "baking" off over the years.


An area that had been painted before and was peeling. It was rust-stained
from our electrical entry into the house, and then painted over to cover.
(We didn't paint it - it was painted some time before we moved in.)


High on the west side.


During some priming.

Here were 4 "before and afters" that I shared on Instagram after priming last Monday night:

On our porch roof.


The hardest place to get to: our 3rd floor dormer.
I'm on a ladder that's on top of our porch roof.


Back west corner (the area that was previously painted).


The back wall.

Here are 2 other places as well:

The other side / front of the 3rd floor dormer (before priming).
I primed the lowest "board" all the way across the front.


The other side (south) of the porch roof. (The north
side was the first "before and after" pair.)

The primer is slightly cooler / grayer than our white house, but that would go away with the bright white topcoat of paint. I started by priming everything with a roller, and then later that day (last Monday) I went over everything and touched up what I needed to with a brush. And I filled lots of holes with caulk (and took down some wires from a satellite dish that came with our house 13 years ago and filled those holes).

Tuesday it rained, but I did some more minor primer touch up in the evening once the sky cleared.

Wednesday, I put a coat of paint on the 3rd floor dormer and on the 2nd floor siding (on top of the porch):

Finished up here!


On this side, you can see how stained the siding is. Yikes. (Looks better from the ground.)


Painting the dormer. Working my way left (you can see the
line of the grayer primer before I move my ladder).


Done with the other side.


Before, primed, and painted.

I also did the "edging" in the back so that it could dry and I could get out the roller on Thursday. (Everything I did on the 2nd and 3rd floors was only with a brush, but I planned to use the roller in the backyard on that bigger area.) The paint asked for 24+ hours to dry between coats, so I just cut in the edging in the back on Wednesday so I could then paint everything on Thursday.

Thursday I got out the roller for the back wall:

REALLY can see how gray the primer is. And note that I did the undersides the day before.


Nearly to the bottom.

As I was working, I knew I'd have to come back on Friday to re-edge again, but I was hoping that was it and I'd be done with the roller. And in the Friday morning light, I decided just to use the brush to hit the edges again, and call everything GOOD. Here's what it looked like when I finished on that HOT Friday morning:

Ugh. I've already forgotten that it looked THAT bad. Yikes. Glad it's done!

So not too bad for 4-5 days of work! (That I [we] decided to do at the last minute!) Now, to tackle some higher areas on the south side (which hasn't been pictured here) that have been totally baked off by the sun. We had painters come a number of years back (maybe 7?) because it was just peeling off, and now it's doing it in smaller areas. I might work on that next week if I can get a ladder tall enough or if I can safely reach it from my ladder.