Painting the Shed

Happy Fall!  My favorite time of the year.  Since the weather was getting cooler, it was time to tackle a few outdoor projects.  The shed was first on Dan's honey-do list.

We were lucky that our house came with a decent sized shed in the backyard.  It was originally in an odd, sideways location, but when we had our septic replaced before moving in, we asked them if they could move it.  They shifted it so it faced the back of the house which we thought was a much better position.  The shed was in great shape, but the outside was faded, and the original window boxes actually fell off due to some rotting.  So the outside definitely needed a makeover.

I've always wanted to paint the shed and make it look more like a barn.  With our cottage-style house, I thought a little red barn would look adorable out back.  Dan has been extra busy preparing the nursery for the arrival of our little one in early December, but because he's the best husband in the world and knew how much I've wanted this done, he cleared an entire Saturday to work on it.

I had selected a deep red color that matched our front door and shutters and would contrast nicely with our blue house.  So Dan bought the paint earlier in the week, borrowed a paint sprayer from a friend, and got up at 6AM to head outside.  He's so good, he even took some before shots - notice how the sun is barely even up!

The first thing he had to do was tape off the trim.  Of course I can't ever make things easy for him and suggested we do a red shed with white trim.  I think he went through about two rolls of painters tape too!  He also covered the two front windows and shutters, so this part took awhile. Dan even had some visitors early that morning.  We have three turkeys that roam our neighborhood.  We literally see them every day and that Saturday was no different.  As part of their morning stroll, they generally come through our backyard.  They were just puttering around when all of a sudden he heard a huge whoosh, and they flew up into the trees over the shed.  It sounded like an airplane taking off.

Back to the shed - Dan used the sprayer and did about 3/4 of the "barn" before running out of paint.  So off to Lowe's he went to get another gallon.  He ended up using about half of that one too, so we definitely needed two.  I had gone out that morning to run some errands, and when I came back, he was done with the red.  It looked a little something like this:

The trim turned out to be the most time consuming part, but Dan did such a great job.  Nine hours later, here's the final product!

 

The shed really pops now and seems like it was meant to be there all along.  The plan for the spring is to put some mulch around it and plant a few small shrubs or flowers to make it look more like a little house.  And I definitely want to add back the window boxes.  But for now, I guess we should get back to decorating that nursery!

Be well,