Painting the Exterior of the House

The second floor balcony was the first item that needed attention.  The railings were pealing and rotted through.  We decided that the best thing to do was remove the railings, leaving the columns intact, and build new ones.  The columns were stripped down, patched, sanded, primed and painted prior to attaching the new railings.  The railings were built during the winter and the remainder of the work was completed in the spring. 

With the balcony completed, we moved on to the rear of the house.

The first item we attacked was the front door.  This proved to be our most lengthy project from start to finish.  Our original plan was to strip the door down to the original wood and refinish it.  This proved be an unbelievable undertaking.  The door had 5 coats of paint on it and the underlying wood was porous from weather damage.  We used a combination of paint strippers, heat guns, sanding blocks, belts, pads but mostly elbow grease.  It took almost a year to complete.  Additionally, Jim’s sister made a stained glass window to replace our existing frosted glass transom (which displayed an incorrect house number!!!) and it turned out beautiful.

Old Transom	New Transom
Removing old glass	Stripping off old paint and refinishing wood.
Old front door	New Front Door