Trims Before Gutter

While our roofers were making great progress on our roof (began here and progress here), we rolled up our sleeves to work on our flaky trims and soffit:

The color choice

Our trim, fascia and soffit were covered by brown paint in the same color of our gutter and garage door. Combined with the yellow brick, the exterior of our house is reeeeeally brown. It is uninteresting and looked tired.

We have since painted the front door a dark bronze color, and installed a new single-panel glass storm door:

We liked this bronze a lot – it is not too cold, not too warm, and plays well with the yellow brick. So when we learned that we could use any color for our gutter, we immediately settled on the same bronze.

This is my third time using Lowe’s Valspar Duramax. I like it. It is a bit thick to spread, but does not leave brush strokes and gives a nice coverage. I used it on the exterior of our shed, which is dark pressure-treated plywood. It only took two coats to form a smooth protective layer on our shed, which is pretty impressive because pressure-treated plywood drinks a lot of paint! The green paint we used on the back of the shed still bled through the plywood color even after three coats. And it somehow looks flat compared to the Valspar Duramax.

Preparing the surface

Before painting, it is always worth spending time to clean the surface well. Slav took a blade and scraped all the loose paint off the trims, fascia, and soffit. He also chipped off tons of staples off the trims – apparently the previous owner stapled holiday lights and left them behind.

A little surprise during the clean-up:

He then patched all the holes and and caulked all around the seams:

All the white portion on our fascia were covered by the old gutter. So this day and half between gutters was a great opportunity for us to paint. We wanted to squeeze in two rounds of caulking and two coats of paint. Had to work fast and non-stop – it was intense!

Slav Started around noon and finished the first round of scraping and caulking by night:

I followed him to give the surface a light sand, and set up plastic drop cloth around the house so we do not need to worry about paint staining our new patio:

I also protected our outdoor lighting with foil:

Paint, caulk, and paint again!

As soon as the caulk was dry, I started painting everything between the brick wall and the new roof flashing in bronze. I did not use primer, but it looked almost perfect after just one coat! This paint really gives great coverage:

The soffit above the garage door:

Man, we really need to change this garage light – the bulb has gone off and it is the last one of its kind after we replaced the front and back porch light.

This is the front of the house after one coat of paint: