Let’s Paint the Shed

Like many people, we have too much stuff!!!!  I’ve tried, yes, I have…I’ve tried to pare down, give things away, donate items but even though I’ve been successful to some extent, we still have too much stuff!

After being in the house a few years, the rafters in the garage, every closet in the house as well as the cabinets and cupboards were full. What we needed is a storage shed!  (Don’t worry, I am still working, slowly, on moving things from our possession to someone else’s – it’s a work in progress).  We searched around and priced sheds at the local hardware and building supply stores but the cost was more than we wanted to spend.

The Hubs always manages to know ‘a guy’ who knows how to do what we need done but when he doesn’t, he manages to find someone local to do what we need done….so we called Greg, a carpenter he found in the Nickels Worth.

The shed size we decided on is 10’ x 12’ with a bran style roof.  Greg was able to build it in one day!  He had built some of it at home and brought those pieces here to assemble the shed.  Very efficient! We asked him to use the same shingles on the roof of the shed that we had on the house, a light grey.  The siding of the shed was a tan color; with the roof being grey and our house  also grey, I knew I would have to eventually stain the shed siding. 

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The shed was built in April 2005 and in May 2006, it was time to refinish the back deck so I figured I might as well stain the shed at the same time.  I found a nice, dark grey solid stain (which is really like paint) for the deck so the shed would be stained to match.  Taking the advice of the Home Depot associate, I bought primer to use before staining both the deck and shed.  After one coat of primer, I applied two coats of dark grey stain.  I also bought a quart of a lighter shade of grey stain for the trim.

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I was happy with the result of this project and the grey looked good with both the weathered fence and deck.  

I was happy with the grey shed and it looked really nice with the house even though I had changed the color of the deck railing to a deep burgundy brown color.  About three years ago, my daughter sent a picture of their shed.  The shed had been a deep forest green the last time I had visited and now she had painted it a beautiful barn red with white trim and black hardware! Sooooo pretty!  I text her back to say I loved it! 

It wasn’t long before I decided our little grey shed needed a facelift!  Off to Home Depot I went to find the perfect shade of red.  I walked up to the paint counter and told the associate exactly what I was looking for – barn red.  She handed me a sample jar and I was sent on my way.  Once I got home and opened the jar, it did not appear to be barn red, more of a deep salmon but I slapped some onto the back of the shed anyway to see if maybe the color would deepen as it dried in the sun. Nope, still more salmon than red.  Back to Home Depot I drove.

I took the sample back to Home Depot and explained that maybe it was the light hitting my shed, but the color did not look like barn red to me.  After some searching through the paint swatches, the associate and I found what looked to be the right color.  I bought a gallon of the exterior paint and headed home to slap a little on the shed to confirm the choice.  Voila’!!!  As you can see in the picture below, the new color is a nice, rich, barn red!

Before painting the siding, I worked on the trim and the hardware.  The trim received two coats of white paint and the hardware a new coat of shiny black paint.  To save time and frustration, I decided not to remove the hardware to paint it.  I took a brown paper bag and tore it in pieces then taped the pieces around the hinges and latch before using spray paint to give them a nice, new look.

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After the tedious work of painting the hardware and trim, it was a breeze to paint the siding.  Well, three of the sides of the shed went quickly; the door side took more time due to edging around all the trim.  I applied two coats of the red for durability against the weather.  Once the paint was dry, I added some wooden ‘feet’ to the corners of the trim.  Over the years, the bottom of the trim has been chipped by the use of a weed whacker.  The little feet would serve two purposes: beef up the corners and also improve the look of the trim.  I used my compound miter saw to cut two pieces for each corner and then used the nail gun to attach them.  After all the pieces were attached, I applied two coats of the white exterior paint that was used on the trim.

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A couple of years ago, we had our roof replace.  It had been through one too many windstorms; the last one took more shingles than the others and we felt that just repairing it again was not the best option.  While the roofers were working on the house, hubby asked how much it would be for them to do the shed in the new, black, shingles.  The roofers just did it for FREE!!! Bonus!

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