June 22, 2014 / JustinKays Porter

Facelift for the Hub (aka the White Trim Battle)

With all the updates we’ve been doing in the backyard recently, we had a massive eyesore lurking around: the Hub. Although highly practical and much more visually appealing with the demo work we’ve done, the addition of new doors, and the lawn of my dreams, the Hub was still visually jarring. It had basically been painted white: so bright that it was nearly impossible to look directly at it in the daylight for fear of burnt retinas. We had always planned on painting the exterior, and now that the doors were in the time seemed right.

Pre-painting. Lots of color choices!

We knew we wanted to go with a darker color to protect our eyes, and we settled on a dream color somewhere between green and grey. With test pots in hand, we painted test swatches on both sides of the Hub visible from the backyard and spent a week looking at them in different lighting and debating the pros and cons of the different shades. In the end, we decided on a color called Gettysburg Grey (the third color among the options in the photos). You’ll notice a swath of white paint with each option: we had decided on white trim, but I’ll get to the battle on white trim in a bit!

New doors protected before the great paint spraying adventure!

Before painting, my dad helped us out by power washing the Hub’s exterior (facelift step #1). That way, the paint would actually stick! Then we taped off the windows and doors, rented a paint sprayer, and got down and dirty with our Gettysburg Grey.

Getting ready…

Ready, set, spray!

So much better 🙂

The paint spraying actually went really fast (facelift step #2). We only had to rent the paint sprayer for 4 hours and Justin and my dad were able to get the whole thing done and cleaned up with time to spare. Justin did most of the spraying and had a nice film of paint all over himself by the end!

Yaaaa exterior painting! He looks so good 🙂

Paint sprayer returned, we went back for a few rounds of holiday checks with a standard paint roller (facelift step #3). The next step was to add the trim boards around the door into the shop and the garage door (facelift step #4). Then came the great white trim debate… Even though we had already decided on white trim, Justin was having big time second thoughts. After we just got rid of all that white, he was worried that the white trim would be too bright and too stark in comparison to the mellow Gettysburg gray and the deep blue we had chosen for the doors. I should note that I had my eye on a dark eggplant color for the door, but that was vetoed as “too purple”. So I stood my ground on the white trim! I convinced him to let me paint the trim white, and if he hated it we could just consider it very well primed and figure out Plan B.

The less than perfect white trim after the first painting go-around.

At the point in the painting progress in the photo above, Justin hated it. But I was convinced I could make him love it. After all, I hadn’t done any cutting in and the edges around the trim were really messy. Plus, the gutters needed at least two more coats, and the white ring within the blue shop door really had to go. So I persevered. And I kept painting… painting, painting, and more painting!

And then it was beautiful…

And now that it looks like this, I’ve at least convinced him that it’s not terrible. Actually, I just asked him: he likes it! That response has been a long time coming 🙂 It looks sooooo much better now that it’s all cleaned up. And we’ve put up twinkle lights along the newly painted white gutter (you can see the bulbs in the photo above), and they just shine like you wouldn’t believe! I’ll have to get a photo of that up at some point.

We love the newly painted Hub. It makes the backyard feel like a new place, and it’s so beautiful! We’ll see if I’ll be able to win the white trim battle again some day in the future when it comes time to paint the house…

So glorious!

And, last but not least, here are the before and afters (I tried to line up the text on the photos with similar features so you can see how far things have come). Enjoy! And good luck with any painting projects you have under way 🙂