You stop seeing your own house. The siding fades a shade a year, the trim goes from white to not quite, and because it happens slowly you never catch the day it tipped from “fine” to “tired.” Then a photo from the lake comes back on someone’s phone and there it is, the pale, chalky cottage at the end of the dock. This one belonged to customers of ours, and they asked us to come up for a week.
The Job
A single-storey lake house with a screened porch, a bay window on the lake side and a detached two-car garage, on a wooded lot above Green Lake, Wisconsin. The original pale green siding had chalked and faded, the trim had dulled, and the owners wanted a change: a deep gray body with crisp white trim that would sit well against the trees and the water.
What Made It Different
- Chalk has to come off first. Faded siding is covered in a fine powder of failed paint. New paint over chalk peels within a year. The whole house was washed and scrubbed, then scraped and sanded where the old coating had lifted, before a drop of primer went on.
- A dark color over a light one. Going from pale green to deep gray means full, even coats or the old color ghosts through on sunny walls. Bare and sanded areas were spot-primed, then the body took two finish coats.
- Trees, a lake and a lot of windows. The crew worked from ladders among mature oaks, masked the big lakeside glass and the screened porch, and sequenced the house so the sides in sun were painted in the morning before the surfaces got hot.
- The garage had to match. Detached garages are usually the forgotten half of an exterior job. This one got the same prep, the same gray and the same white trim, so the property reads as one.
The Result
Deep gray body, bright white trim and fascia, the porch screens framed clean, and the garage finished to match. The house that had been disappearing into the trees now holds its own against them. The family’s two dogs supervised the whole week from the lawn.
What a Full Exterior Repaint Looks Like
Wash, scrape, sand, prime, caulk, two coats, in that order, with the sunny walls done before they heat up and the trim cut in by hand. It is the same sequence on every house we paint, from a North Shore colonial to a Wisconsin cottage; the difference is only in how much prep each surface needs. Our exterior painting checklist walks through all fourteen steps, and the residential painting page covers how a job with us runs from the first call to the last walk-through. If you are deciding when to schedule, read when to book exterior painting.
Once the house is painted, an annual visit keeps it that way: that is what the Exterior Care Plan is for.
Talk to Pete About Your Exterior
Call (847) 564-4880 or request a free estimate online. Pete walks every house himself and tells you what the surfaces need before anyone opens a can of paint.