The Casa de Kitty Life

Sorry I’ve not written lately - been really busy with a work project and life in general. This is going to be the first of many posts.

So here we are with the holidays gone. after being without any real rain for over 7 months, we’re finally getting some. The garden is loving it.

So after my last post, we’ve been busy - lots going on not just with the house, but also in our lives. We went on a vacation to visit my good friend Dale in Nova Scotia, Canada. While we were up there we saw some great sites and met some lovely people. I’ll write more about that later. One thing that is particularly pertinent to this post is a house we saw in Halifax with a color scheme that was much like the one we had worked with a new Designer on, Mandi. It really wasn’t that far off from what we had already considered but it was nice to see a similar color scheme applied for real. Mandi of La Amande designs helped us with a final color treatment for the house and this house in Halifax had one that was very similar.

Preparation for painting - We decided to get the house painted this year. As such, after an event we hosted in October, and getting back from a weeks vacation to Nova Scotia, we started getting the outside ready for painting by trimming some of the plants back, and best of all - getting the tacky awning removed from the front porch.

Here’s a few pics showing the front of the house with the awning and of us removing it.

View of the front - pre-painting with Awning attached - taken in August prior to our consultation with a “Designer”.

Here’s pictures of us taking down the awning. I took the pictures of Chris, then I asked Salli to come over and help us with some additional photos of the two of us. Seems there’s not many of me, as I’m usually behind the camera.

Left: Chris working on pulling the screws out of the awning securing it to the gutter off that side of the porch gable.Below: Chris working on removing the bolts connecting the aluminum awning posts to the brick work.Far Below: Chris and I getting the last bits awning off the house.

Painting Begins
With all of our prep-work finished for the job, we left the rest to our painter. We found a really good painter (Ray of Maniac Painters) who two of our neighbors had used, and he did a really good job. Also, he worked up a really good quote for us.

Here’s some pictures of the prep work and painting.

Prep Work - Washing

Above Left: Ray and Ron devise a system to to reach the high gable over the porch roof. Because we have a concrete-asbestos tile roof that’s old as the hills, they couldn’t walk directly on the tile. Ray devised a way using plywood with rope to distribute his weight.Above Right: Ray pressure washes the brick around the port columns.Left: Pressure washing the eaves blows off a lot of old loose paint. The last time the house had been painted was probably when the Richter’s owned the place.

Priming Begins

So this phase fell at a great time - right around Halloween. For the spooky night the whole front of the house was painted a ghostly white. Some people actually asked if we had it done on purpose.

Now we see some color!

So after we had a bit of rain around Halloween, the guys got busy painting for real. Ray was great to work with, because he knew Chris’ mom and sister was going to be visiting soon, he painted the entire front first. After that he then proceeded to paint the rest of the house. This was to give them a good impression on arrival.

Here’s the pics of work in progress.

Left: Here’s Ray Painting the porch ceiling. For the porch ceiling, we chose a bright white to help increase the light on the porch, especially at the far end near the front sunroom. Another thing we plan on doing is to add a single recessed light at that end.Below: Ray painting the front of the garage. The garage got the same paint treatment as the house to create a uniform look for both buildings.