Maintaining a 115 Year Old Paint Job - Part 1: Layers of history

May 28

*Freshly painted when we bought it back in 2011*

When we purchased our home back in 2011, the previous owner had just painted the home, so of course it looked pretty and ready to go! Little did I think, at the time, that the new paint on the exterior would just be one more layer added to many of the past 115 years.

After we did the home addition in 2018, our contractor asked if we wanted to have the old portion painted along with the back. At the time, we were running low on funds following the major addition and decided against it as I knew there would be a bit more work associated with repainting the old section of the house

*My neighbors lovely view of our peeling paint near the bathroom window.*

I’m taking the bold plunge that no other homeowner in the past 115 years seemed to be willing to take on….actually prepping the siding for new paint before just covering what was already there. Its interesting to me to figure out why no-one was willing enough to strip the old paint. Was it because of health reasons and lead based paint? Or perhaps the cost was just too much to take on compared to slapping another coat on top of what was already there. Most likely, the sheer magnitude of a project this size deterred previous homeowners in the same way it deterred me over the past decade. One thing is for sure, this will be a long term project that is tackled over many days throughout the summer, but I’m excited to finally start this project and see how it all turns out!

*The addition being painted in 2018. Same colors, just not nearly as faded*

Through the 7 years we owned the home I had started to notice the paint on the old section peeling in sections. In fact, it has become quite bad in a few sections of the house and I was starting to feel a bit guilty that our neighbors view was of a run down section of our home that had been long forgotten! What really scared me most, though, was the knowledge that the paint was peeling away in big sections from the siding, leaving exposed wood, which invariably means lead based paint. So here we are, nearly a decade after we bought the home finally taking the plunge in repainting the exterior, one section at a time.

I’ll continue to post along the way to show the progress and share my thoughts as I go. I think I’ve developed a technique and system that will allow me to be efficient as I progress, but then again, I’m trying to remove 115 years of history from my home, and invariably that will just take some time! In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a small teaser photo of the details of all the colors this house used to be.