The House

Here's the post you've all been waiting for....from yours truly, Ashley Watson. We bought our 1880 Folk Victorian home in September of 2008, and we knew from the beginning that this house was going to take work... a lot of work....no, really... a LOT of work. We initially focused on the most important things first. Getting a roof that didn't leak, removing the black mold and asbestos, trashing the heinous shag carpeting and wood paneling from upstairs. Along the way we've had some great moments (like discovering the original wood floors were still underneath all of that carpeting), and some not so great moments (like when we discovered that the floor joists in the upstairs bathroom were so rotted that they actually bent under the weight of Aaron walking across them).

Last Summer I was determined to tackle painting the outside of the house. My parents came up from Houston for 3 weeks and we put in 8 hour days, 6 days a week. At the end of the 3 weeks, it was painfully obvious that I was not going to be able to do this all myself (unless I quit my job and became a painter, but unfortunately I am not fast enough, or good enough, to do that). So we bit the bullet and have hired professional painters. Which was not as easy as it seems. A few years back, New York State passed new restrictions about removing lead paint from homes, so finding somebody who was even willing to do our house was an experience in itself.  But alas, we finally found (and hired) Dave Godette and his team from Dave's Painting, and thus far they are well worth the time it took to find them.

Aaron and my goal is to restore this house to the glory of what it once was. We have a picture of the house from 1895 (see right), which is my inspiration for this. The picture obviously can't tell us what color the house was originally, but it does show us that the trim was darker than the body of the house. We scraped down some layers on the house to find the original colors and have matched them as closely as we could. We decided to go with Benjamin Moore paint, both for the high quality paint and because they have an historical colors section with all colors being appropriate to the late 1800's.

Bleeker Beige

Alexandria Beige

Townsend Harbor Brown

Avon Green

The body of the house is going to be Bleeker Beige and the trim Alexandria Beige. The window sashes will be Townsend Harbor Brown. We will also use this color to accent some of the fancy woodwork that we have. The shutters will be an Avon Green. We believe that this will be a fairly accurate replica of what the house looked like when it was first built. Before Dave and his team can get to putting colors on the house, they first have to strip the paint off that we have. Using a paint shaver, and a lot of pure muscle, they have been able to get it down to the wood, and it looks amazing! In the coming weeks, they should be able to start painting the top coats. Future posts will discuss the shutters, windows, and progress of the house along the way. We are so excited to see the end results of painting the house (and even more excited to not be doing it ourselves). Stay tuned for more!