Harold's Renovation Blog: #119: What Almost Derailed Our Painted House Makeover

Now that we’ve completed our big brick house painting project, we’re sharing all the behind-the-scenes twists & turns of the previous week (believe me, the hits kept coming). A big task like this can veer off course pretty quickly… which it did… more than once! We’re also sharing why it turned out better than we expected and what’s next on the list. Plus, John needs advice from other gadget lovers out there and we’ve got more info about our upcoming furniture line launch.

You can download this episode from Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn Radio, and Spotify – or listen to it below! Then use this page to check out any links, notes, or photos we referenced. Note: If you’re reading in a feed reader, you may have to click through to the post to see the player.

What’s New

If you missed last week’s post with ALLLLL the details and photos of painting our house white, be sure to check that out to get yourself up to speed.

You can also catch these other podcast discussions where we debated if we should do it, how we decided to go for it, and what we worried about most right before embarking on the project:
- Episode #101: First presenting the idea of painting our house along with the pros and cons to doing it
- Episode #105: Making the decision to move forward, and how our listeners helped
- Episode #118: Our stresses and concerns going into the painting project
In the photo below you can see some of the areas of siding that had to be painted with the matching Benjamin Moore paint (and you can better appreciate how unfinished the project would’ve looked if they were still the old gray-brown color!).

And here’s a progress photo from our Wednesday Marathon Of Insanity (also known as Halloween). This was taken early in the morning while we were trying to get the porch reconstructed before trick or treaters came skipping up to our door. Note the two big holes in the brick on either side of that new doorframe we were actively building… which ended up being the perfect spot for some new lanterns to illuminate the stoop.

Just a few hours later, the electricians were here helping us get the new fixtures all wired up. We mounted them on white composite blocks to cover the brick holes, which is how we hung the front porch lanterns at the pink house too (some rot-proof backing behind them is really nice as a base – and in this case it safely sealed those holes in the brick too).

We assumed that to get the other fixture wired through the right side hole we’d incur some drywall damage inside, but they managed to make it work without that by snaking it down through the crawl space and back up the wall on the other side. MIRACULOUS! It did involve one guy yelling through the floor of our front closet to the other guy in the crawl space for about a half-hour, for which we’re eternally grateful (at one point the guy in the crawl space may have said “I don’t think I’m alone down here – I hear scratching… it might be a mouse”).

And we weren’t kidding when we said it was a photo finish a few days later on Friday. Lance, the painter, had just a few extra minutes to snap some “after” photos for his portfolio from waaaay up in the lift. Side note: our neighbors have never been more entertained and supportive of a project of ours – they all visited multiple times a day to cheer us on (which makes Sherry tear up every time she talks about it).
Also, if you’re interested in checking out more of Lance’s work, he’s got lots of before & afters on his Instagram page. He also has his contact info there if you want to hire him for your own job. He mainly travels all over the US for his antique limewash applications (using this other product called Classico – you can see more on his IG account). So if that’s a look you’d like, he can definitely help you out.

Here’s one of the after photos where you can see what Sherry means about our “Target ball” landscaping. This is after she did lots of trimming to tame a lot of unruliness out there.

We’re Digging

If you haven’t had a chance to poke around and preview our new furniture collection, you can see it all now at YoungHouseLoveFurniture.com. We’ll keep you posted in a couple weeks as to when it all goes live for sale on Wayfair and Wayfair Canada. We’re beyond excited!

Those are the navy X-Back Chairs that Sherry mentioned, along with the mixed-finish Cinch Table that has a metal base and the glossy white top.
You can also see the white dentil molding detail that mimics our house on the Wisp Dresser and Debonair Dresser.
And below is the Noble Dresser, which was inspired by the vintage dresser in our bedroom that was handed down to us from my dad (he bought it secondhand for $100 decades ago – and we believe it’s from the 1920s). You should’ve seen his face when he saw this new one in person!

Lastly, please DM, message, or tweet us your thoughts on the Apple Watch. Is it worth me spending my birthday money on? Will it make me look like this when I do yoga?

And if you’re looking for something we’ve dug in a past episode, but don’t remember which show notes to click into, here’s a master list of everything we’ve been digging from all of our past episodes. You can also see all the books we’ve recommended on our Book Club page.

And lastly, a big thank you to Annie Selke for sponsoring this episode. Their big Cyber Sale kicks off next Monday, November 19th, meaning that in one week can you score 25% off anything on their site! So visit annieselke.com/YHL to start making your list.