House Painting

As our Christmas gift, Paul's parents gave us house painting.  The paint has been purchased and in a few short weeks the Losavio family will be coming to Tuscaloosa to paint our house!  I just hope that my mother-in-law is praying away the rain!

This is what our house looks like now.  Boring.  And in desperate need of new paint.

This is what (we hope) it will look like when it's finished.  Paul modified the above photo using Photoshop.

See how removing the shutters makes the house look larger?

We tested two colors on the back of the house.  We chose the one on the left.  The other one looked too "Smurfy."  Keep in mind that Paul had already begun prepping these windows.  It's going to look worse before it looks better!

The grayish-blue paint that we selected is Poolside by Sherwin-Williams.  The color of our porch will be a dark charcoal, Rock Bottom by Sherwin-Williams.  Our front door will be a bright yellow.

For the next few weeks, our free time will be dedicated to preparing the house for painting.  We have 20 windows that need to be scraped, sanded, and reglazed.  Our siding is asbestos (which isn't really harmful unless you grind it up and snort it) and fortunately it doesn't require much prep work.  The shrubbery at the front of the house will need to be cut back significantly, but probably not removed.

Here's Paul hard at work:

We have an awning covering our back door, which I'd like to keep.  It's currently green, which won't go with the new house color.  Have you ever painted a canvas awning?  What type of paint did you use?