Exterior Painting - Front Porch Facelift

Tips and Advice on Exterior Prep, Painting and Picking the Perfect Paint Color

Front Porch ‘Before’ Picture

Hooray, Front Porch Painting Is Complete! (Sort Of)

A fresh coat of paint on the front porch can do so much for the overall curb appeal of your home. That’s what I kept repeating to myself as I worked away at the prep work before the actual painting began. Did you know that the most labor-intensive part of any paint job, whether it’s interior painting or exterior painting, is the prep? Yep, all the effort you put into brushing or rolling on that new coat of paint is wasted if you haven’t taken the time to properly prepare a surface to receive that paint.

Exterior Painting Prep Tips

• Power wash to remove any loose paint.
• Let the surface dry thoroughly.
• Sand or scrape any places requiring more direct attention than the power washer provides.
• Prime any exposed wood.
• Choose a good quality exterior grade paint.

Paint Time Management - Pick Your Battles

Don’t paint in direct sunlight - the paint will dry too quickly and as hard as you try, you won’t get a smooth paint finish.

High humidity will add to the drying time of paint.

Picking The Perfect Paint Color

If you’ve ever watched someone at the paint store mix paint, you’ll have seen some of the odd combinations and quantities of colorants that are added to a base to get the desired result - the perfect paint color. Every shade and tone has its own unique color formula - precise measurements of specific colorants. It’s hard to imagine that to achieve a certain shade of white might require the addition of a blue or red colorant. This does however explain what is referred to as an undertone. That subtle hint of blue in a red paint color, or in the case of the old paint on my front porch, a shade that looked more pink than beige.

Here’s a photo showing the difference between the old paint color and the new paint color. The old color is at the top.

It’s difficult to get an accurate representation of color on some computer screens, so if the picture doesn’t do the colors justice please take my word for it - the old color looked very pink! The new color is creamier with a subtle yellow undertone that works much better with the old yellow brick of the house.

My advice for choosing the perfect paint color - gather a lot of paint samples, then work through them one at a time eliminating those with undertones that won’t work with the important surrounding elements. Don’t worry about only limiting yourself to paint samples for the brand of paint you are planning to use. Most paint stores can reproduce any sample color and mix it in the paint of your choice.

So Why Is The Front Porch Painting Only ‘Sort Of’ Complete?

If you look at the before picture above, you’ll notice that prior to painting there was a bit more trim. Now look at the after picture below.

Front Porch ‘After’ Picture

Notice anything missing? Good eye if you said trim! I really didn’t care much for the gingerbread trim - it seemed like overkill. And the trim rails that ran between the porch posts would have been murder to paint in place, so I removed everything. Now I’m not entirely certain if I want to paint the rail trim and put it back on, or not. I did a little doctoring of the before picture to remove the gingerbread so I could see what the porch would look like with only the rail trim.

Modified Porch Picture

Does the porch look naked without the trim? Minus the ladder and the pieces of trim leaning on the wall, does the after picture represent a clean, simple and uncluttered front porch? I’d love to hear from anyone with an opinion.

Can’t wait to get to work on painting the small upper balcony, the garage door and all the board and batten. Can’t wait to get to work on the small upper balcony, the garage door and all the board and batten. Can’t wait to ……. You think about the front porch and I’ll just keep repeating that line.