At Last! The House Series Has Begun!

Question: What is the cheapest, fastest, and easiest way to improve the look of a house?

Answer: Turn on the light! Ha ha ha ha!! Oh, man. Gets me every time. But seriously, most decorators and other types will tell you that a good quality paint job will do a lot to brighten and improve any room, or indeed a whole house. This is evidenced by today's selection of photos.

In the initial photos, shown below, you can see how really crapulent the paint job was when we bought our house. It had probably been painted sometime in the 1980s, I'm guessing, which is rather a long time ago. The paint was peeling of sheets in some cases, badly flaked everywhere, and had to be stripped and entirely redone. Not a job I was looking forward to doing my self--stripping and painting Dutch Clapboard is not exactly a giddy thrill.

Fortunately I never intended to do the job myself, but after fainting dead away in the middle of walking the dog when I was given the first quote for the place--just shy of 10 grand--we set about looking for somebody who would do a competent job cheaply. Thank goodness we found one (thanks to the Simpsonville Lowe's). His name was Mike Henderson--and I recommend Mike Henderson as a great inexpensive housepainter in the Greenville area. (That should show up on Google eventually.)

There was more wood than paint showing through in some areas, as you can see. Though the green parts had clearly been painted more recently, I suspect people just kept slapping new paint over old peeling paint on the siding, not taking any time to do it right, because it's hard to do it right. That's why you pay somebody.

And so we did. I think you can see from the After pictures below how much better the place looks. Yes, there are a lot of paint shavings on the ground now, and I need to come up with an effective way to clean those up. Any suggestions would be appreciated... I'm not looking forward to just taking a flat-bladed shovel to the entire area around the house, but it's my only idea so far.