The Best Way To Paint The Exterior Of Your House

As you know, I’m always willing to take on any DIY project that comes my way with little to no hesitation.  An eternal optimist, I jump right in with the end result in mind, happily leaving out thinking about the steps in between.  And what could be so difficult about painting the exterior of your house?!

The 1820 desperately needed a new paint job, and to save ourselves $17,000 we decided to paint the exterior of our house, ourselves.  Fortunately, the folks at Wagner Spraytech caught wind of our house exterior paint project and sent me the Flexio 990 to help us paint like the pros.

Now, with a promise to Wagner Spraytech, I’m locked in to this project.  I’m all in.  And truth is, the painting part was a dream come true and I’ll share all of that with you in a minute.  It was the scraping and power washing and sanding that was completely overwhelming and daunting.

We borrowed some scaffolding, set it up and got to work.  At first, the scraping was a cinch; there was already a lot of chipped and cracked paint that peeled off just with the touch of our hands.

But then reality set in.  Focusing on the area being scraped was one thing, but then stepping back and looking at the rest of the entire house that needed to be scraped was another.  Hence, the scraping deemed never-ending.

We got sidetracked.  Some hot days were mixed in with some other interruptions that garnered this scraping process lengthy, to say the least.  Couple these interruptions with a serious case of ADHD-I’m-so-ready-to-move-on-from-this-task, bored of scraping, aye aye aye mindset.  The scraping went from “this isn’t so bad” to “what did I get myself in to?”

Just keep scraping, scraping scraping.  Our neighbors would drive by and hold a hand up to their eye as a makeshift blinder.  Others would walk by shaking their heads because our beloved farmhouse did look like an eyesore.  And when I stepped back to take a full-on glimpse, it did hurt to look at it.

I get it.  I’m with ya.

But doing it right is always the name of the game.  There were / are so many issues with our 1820 because things weren’t done correctly in the first place, that we are having to go back and correct.  Point is, painting the exterior of the house without the prep of scraping and sanding would have been counter productive.  Do it right, and that’s what we did. (with quite a few grumbles)

With a three months of scraping behind us, and an eyesore of a house, it was time to paint.  (picture me here slapping my hands together and rubbing them up and down)

I’ve never been so happy to see a paint sprayer in all of my life.  Dare I say that this Flexio 990 saved my life – specifically my sanity.  It was easy to put together, and the paint hose slipped right in with the paint.  I turned that thing on and started spraying, and I swear I heard angels.

Holding the sprayer and moving it in long, steady strokes, my eyes were as big as saucers because I was so happy that our house was quickly coming back to life, and looking good!!  The coverage was superb and saved me hours upon hours if I had painted with a brush or a roller.  This Flexio 990 is a product that I highly recommend and if you have a painting project planned in your future, investing in this paint sprayer is a must!!

To recap, it took us three months to scrape our house, and ONLY one full day to paint our house.  A HUGE, HUGE thank you to the folks at Wagner Spraytech for sponsoring this project, and I now have sincere devotion to the Flexio 990 on all of my larger-scaled painting projects.

I can honestly say that I don’t get too geeked out on power tools, but this Flexio 990 pretty much filled my life with glee.  It is truly worth its weight in gold.

The 1820 had needed a new paint job since the day we moved in 6 years ago, and now we can finally check this project off on our to-do list.

This project and post was sponsored by Wagner Spraytech.  All opinions and paint-splattered comments are all my own.  Please see my disclaimer page for details.