Painting The Storage Building

The storage building was finally ready for paint. I've trimmed the eaves and soffets, replaced the roof, added exterior corner mouldings and Lu primed the bare spots. Time for some finish paint.

I wanted to spray the building. Two problems. A consumer grade gun is $100.00 and up and renting a commercial rig is $50.00 a day. Have I ever mentioned just how cheap I am? A couple of years ago I bought a Central automotive gun to do some work on the Corvette. I later decided to bite the bullet and have it painted so the gun has been on my shelf, unused, ever since.

It's an el cheapo I bought from Harbor Freight for 25 bucks. It's a gravity fed HVLP with a one quart hopper. Still, it was worth seeing if it would actually spray the thicker house paint.

I fiddled with it, adjusting pressures, spray patterns and feeds. I didn't have any additional tips so what I had was what I had. Still, after much trial and error I got this pattern. It'a only a few inches wide but it put out enough paint to make it acceptable for our purposes. The best part is the narrower spray pattern gave me good control in tight spaces and really cut down on the amount of paint we used, about 5/6's of a gallon for the entire building.

The siding is clapboard so the gun really saved time painting the underside of the boards. The gun is gravity fed but as long as the hopper was kept full it painted on it's side just fine.

Lu has always been strictly a brush and roller painter. One of my goals here was to introduce her to spray painting, both to let her try it and to make sure she knew how to set everything up when I'm not around.

Yeah, call it mission accomplished. She was tickled pink. I never saw the gun again until it came time to paint the places she couldn't reach. I did get to hear those words every husband dreams of. "I love this. You were soooo right!" That color is also going on the rear building and the main house. Dark brown trim throughout.

Here it is finished. We'll be doing the trim in dark brown to match the house and garage. The panel in the center of that door will also be dark brown with the rest of the door house color or maybe reversed. We can't quite decide. Anyone have an opinion? Please chime in. The door surround will be dark brown.

Just for comparison here's how it looked before. Crappy paint, diseased soffets and gables, open siding corners and a bad roof. I cut the soffets and gables back by about 6 inches to get to good wood, put on a new roof, put on exterior corner mouldings and painted the whole thing. At least it no longer causes me physical pain every time I look at it. We seriously considered just tearing it down. I'm glad we didn't.

I think it turned out quite well. A nice transformation. We'll be painting those fences to match. Lu has 'volunteered'. She loves her new toy. My total investment was less than $100.00. That includes everything except tools. Lu and I do have more than a few hours into it but that's just pride and sweat equity.

And a cheap husband of course.


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