Painting the house ...

**ironmaiden** · 06-02-2006, 11:21 AM

The house needs painting. And there are 3 options before us.

1. Hire someone and change the color of the house and trim.

2. Hire someone keep the color the same.

3. We do it. Keep the color the same and do one side per year.

#1 Is the most expensive. One reason is that hiring someone costs money.
But then I thought of the costs associated with changing the color.
The decks would also need to be repainted, and the shed and it's window boxes, some of the flowers on the plants would clash, the deck furniture would be the wrong color, possibly the screen doors as well. It's that cascade problem.

#2 Keeping the same color saves money.

#3 We do it. We did it the last time 6 years ago - before DS was crawling. It's a big project that takes lots of time. Someone once gave us the idea that you paint one side of your house each year. That way it's a smaller project and the house always looks good. Of course this method means that you are sticking with the same color scheme. But it is less work and actually less cost as you are buying 1/4th of the paint each year as opposed to all at once.

**3-boys-4-me** · 06-02-2006, 11:33 AM

I would say paint it yourself, but change the color.
We painted our previous home. We didn't use a paint brush but purchased one of those paint sprayers. The sprayer made the work much easier and faster. The house was a nasty 1970's yellow and we changed it to tan with brown shutters. It took us awhile, but it looked so good and literally took years off the house. It was hard work, but the money we saved made it all worth it.

**Laurie in Bradenton** · 06-02-2006, 11:33 AM

Well I'm for hiring someone to do it. Especially since DH and I are painters. HAHA We often paint homes of friends and change colors often. We have worked it out with them to take payments or to trade services. For example:
A friend of ours does aluminum facia and screen work. He put new gutters on our house and fixed several screens we painted his home. Each supplied the products needed for their project and just the labor was traded. Worked out great.

Laurie in Bradenton