Queen Anne Gets a Paint Job, Part 4

Without further ado, here are some pictures of our house WITH PAINT! We've been waiting a long four years for this to happen, and it's finally time. Enjoy~~

All the different colors.

Some color up on the second floor! The teal color is called Blue Echo.

The teal is done.

Alex adds some lime green to the peak. All of the wavy lines will be that color.

The peak in the shade. The trim around the window needs to be painted a cream color, yet, and the storm windows aren't quite done.

The peak in the sun. What a difference! There are four different colors up there: charcoal along the crown moulding, the wavy cedar shakes are a lime green, the zig-zag cedar shakes are more of an olive green, and the squared cedar shakes are the same as the body of the house.

I will post more progress as its being made! Thanks for reading!

Queen Anne Gets a Paint Job, Part 3

The south side. Some people hear that and think of big cities like Chicago. In this case, we are talking about the south-facing side of our 1902 Queen Anne Victorian.

The south side of our home has had some issues. A floating corner that was having a hard time staying afloat. A leaky roof. A dilapidated porch. A weird fire escape??

A while back, our home was a multi-family home, and the second and third floors were used as a boarding house. We're not sure what the municipal code required, but we can only assume that it was during this time that a fire escape was added off the third floor. It was certainly an ugly thing.

The fire escape is visible in the upper left.

Another view of the fire escape.

When Karstin and Alex finished up on the north and east sides of the house, they moved on to the south. They were able to get two days' work done before this happened:

Spring in Wisconsin. Go figure.

We had to wait a bit for the snow to melt and for the ground to dry up a little bit, and the scraping was underway!

Notice how the fire escape is gone. Yay!

Down to the bare wood.

Alex commented that the paint came off really easily on this side of the house, compared to the north and east sides. We're thinking it may have had something to do with how the sun always beats down on this side of the house.

Ready for primer.

Now that the south side was completely scraped and prepped, Karstin and Alex could put some primer on. They decided that some of the primer would be tinted gray, so the darker colors of paint wouldn't need two coats.

Primer's all done. Now to get some color on there.

Check back for updates when the paint gets applied!

Queen Anne Gets a Paint Job, Part 2

The scraping and priming has begun! Karstin and Alex have been diligently grinding and hand scraping the layers of paint off of the east and north sides of our home. Some of these pictures are not for the faint of heart, especially if you have a fear of heights. You have been warned!

Access to the porch roof is very important. The painters can reach a lot of the house from here!

A lot of the second floor has been scraped.

Moving on to the north side of the house...

The wooden pillars came pretty clean. The spindles under the railings took them over a week to complete! There were many layers of paint on each one of them, but they got it all down to the bare wood.

Yeah, that is pretty high...

This is why we hired someone to paint our house. There's no way I'd go up there.

Gulp.

Now that they are finished putting the primer on these two sides of the house, we can get excited for color to be added. You read that right - COLOR. Queen Anne is getting a new paint job, and color, to boot! And not just one color... SEVEN.

Primer is all done on this side! It won't be white for long...

All has been completed on the north side, too, except for the very top of the peak.

The spindles turned out great. All 159 of them.

Stay tuned for more updates on our painting adventure!

Queen Anne Gets a Paint Job, Part I

When we purchased our house in June, 2012, we knew that we'd have to get our house painted as soon as we could. Years of neglect, peeling paint, and possible citations from the City of Green Bay for lack of upkeep were all bearing down on us.

This soffit is missing quite a bit of paint.

This one is too. The water damage really affected the paint.

We were recommended Green Bay's Perfect Painter by more than just a handful of neighbors. Joel Van Stechelman has quite the reputation in Astor for painting houses, not only for his time and effort, but also for the quality and longevity of the final product. Our neighbors had their house painted nearly ten years ago, and it still looks fresh and perfect today. To be honest, I was under the impression that the home had vinyl siding on it, the paint looks so great. Calling Joel was a given.

More missing paint here.

We got Joel over to our house to take a look at the exterior. We walked around a couple of times, and he told us that he'd get us on his list.

Fast forward to September 1, 2015. Backing out of the driveway on the first day of school, ready to bring our son Jacob to his first day as a preschooler. A truck pulls up with a whole bunch of ladders. Could it be? Could it really be them?? Were my eyes deceiving me?

Sure enough! Karstin, Joel's son, and his friend Alex, were coming to set up to start painting our house. This began the journey that we will hopefully someday call our "little $20,000 house project".

Below, take a look at some pictures from before the painters arrived. Watch for updates on their progress!

Some paint is missing from this trim.

A lot of paint was peeling on this side due to a large shrub that we had to remove.

We painted over this area to protect the siding until the painters arrived.

A New Coat of Paint: The Study

Back when our home was built, wallpaper was all the rage. So were dark colors of paint, which is why we chose a mulberry paint color for our study.

Before painting...

... and after!

We love this new, dark color. With the high ceilings and the large windows, the space doesn't feel small, as is what sometimes happens when walls are painted a dark color.

Before...

... and after!

A New Coat of Paint: The Nursery

The walls in our nursery were in rough shape. Something must have happened and caused some damage years ago, because the plaster on one of the walls was patched and very pitted and bumpy. The room was painted in a faux finish, probably to hide the imperfections of the newer plaster.

Some cracks have been repaired.

We tried to even out some of the rough parts by smoothing some joint compound over the pitted and uneven surface of the wall. There were also a few cracks in the walls, which we also repaired.

This large hole took three layers of joint compound to fill in!

After everything was smoothed out, we had Nitka Painting come over and give this room a new coat of paint. We loved the color of the playroom so much, that we had the same color in here. Look at how it turned out!

The color turned out great.