Let's Paint the Shutters & Trim!

This is the time of year where we want to be outside! And, who can blame us? Mother Nature is offering some gorgeous weather (on and off between thunderstorms). The cold grip of winter has finally faded – which took longer this year but that could just be my perception.

Spending time in the garden, doing landscaping, or simply sitting on the deck enjoying a cup of coffee or a glass of wine is so enjoyable! This year, I’m pulling up more sod to increase the flower beds. One of the reasons that I am increasing the size of the front yard flower beds is that we have Hostas that have outgrown their bed space. I love these Hosta plants and even though we have divided them many, many times, they thrive and grow like crazy! Last year, I ripped up sod in the backyard but that was to add some space between the fence & house and the lawn. You can read all about that little project here.

If you live in a State that enjoys all 4 seasons as we do, there’s a good chance that the things in your outdoor living space become tattered looking pretty quick. All you other folks have more time before Mother Nature takes a toll on your things, but eventually, our outdoor space needs some tender loving care.

A few years ago, while browsing at Habitat, I found some vinyl shutters. Hmm, I thought, that would be a nice addition to the house! There were 3 pairs in a deep burgundy color. I decided to pick them up with fingers crossed that they would fit some of my windows. I brought them home and, voila!, they did!!! At the time, I had 8 windows so I went online to see where I could find more to match. I was lucky enough to find a company that sold some that were almost similar and ordered them.

Below are pics of the house before shutters

House before shutters

When the new shutters arrived, they were darker than the ones I had. I decided to paint them to match since I have 4 windows on the front of the house and wanted them to be the same color. I took one of the shutters to Home Depot to match the color. When I got home with the paint, I used a small foam brush and painted one pair. The color was perfect! I left the rest of the new shutters alone as they were going to be installed on the back of the house so they didn’t have to match the front shutters.

With the help of one of my sons, who isn’t afraid of climbing up the extension ladder to reach the 2nd story windows, we installed them. Vinyl shutters are easy to install. They come with either screws or brads. You hold your shutter in place, drill a hole into the siding and install the screw or brad.

Installing shutters

What a difference these shutters made to the look of the house! I love how the house looks with shutters! It went from plain to custom with that simple addition. These pictures were taken in the evening so the color isn’t nice and bright but you can see what a dramatic change they make.

New shutters!

As I mentioned, the weather takes its toll on the materials outside and those items require upkeep. I’ve repainted and stained the deck, painted the deck furniture, & fence, etc. When it was time once again to redo the deck and also touch up the shutters, I thought it might be nice to actually change the accent color. Our house is a light grey and the burgundy shutters and deck railing coordinated really nicely with it. We enjoyed that color for a few years but now, I wanted to change it up. I started looking for a color that would both coordinate with the light grey while bringing a bit of a warmer tone with it. I settled on a nice teal color with an aqua accent. The picture below shows the 3 colors I had narrowed down to. To help choose, I sat the deck cushion and pillow next to the deck rails that I had painted. I decided that the middle one and the one on the right would be perfect to use. (You can see how the burgundy stain was peeling on the deck)

Between the two paint colors, I chose to use the teal for the shutters, front door, trim around the garage door, and deck railing. I would eventually use it on the fence too. The aqua was going to be used as an accent color on the deck & front patio chairs & planters.

Painting the shutters

Instead of removing the shutters to paint them, I chose to paint them as they were – installed. It seemed like a good idea since I didn’t want to have to both remove and reinstall them. What this meant, though, was that I was going to have to (gasp) brave climbing the extension ladder in order to be able to do the painting. As you can see, I did just that! It was nerve-wracking to be sure but once I make up my mind to do a project, there’s usually no talking me out of it, although hubby tried. He held onto the ladder to stabilize it while I painted. I used a foam brush to apply the paint to the shutters like I had when I painted the pair burgundy ones and also a tiny artist brush for the sides of the shutters. As you can see in one of the pics, I chose to remove the screens on the upper windows to get to the inside edge of the shutters since the extension ladder would have had to rest on the window frame to reach those spots and I wasn’t comfortable doing that. I was pleased that the two coats covered the burgundy well. You can’t even tell they have been painted. While I had the ladder out, I also painted the white vinyl trim around the windows that had some discoloration.

Changing the color

New shutter color

I painted the wood trim around the front door, garage door & back door to the garage teal. To apply the paint, I used my favorite 1 1/2″ angled paint brush. These items can be found in my Products I love – Painting post. Once the wood trim was finished, I used a small artist brush to touch up the white vinyl trim. At least, it looks white. You can see in the pictures below that it’s actually creamish. I was using part of a sheet of photo paper to keep the paint off the siding while I was working on the trim. When I pulled the sheet out from under the trim to do the next section, I was surprised that the white paint actually looked cream and even makes the trim look cream when that sheet is held up it and yet once you remove the sheet, the trim looks white. Could it be that the photo paper is actually a greyish color?!

Back door trim done
White paint on photo paper
Is it white or cream?
Looks white to me!

The front door was the next painting project to be tackled. I had painted it once before when I went with the burgundy theme. I like using a painting pad & a 1 1/2″ angled paintbrush. My process is to remove the doorknobs (although you can use painters tape to protect them and leave them in place) and then paint the 6 panels first starting with the paintbrush and painting the insets, followed by painting the flat panels with the painting pad. Once those are done, continuing with the painting pad, I paint the top, middle, bottom horizontal crossbars then the left, middle, right vertical pieces. I’ve found that two coats of paint are usually sufficient, but you may need a 3rd coat depending on the colors of your base and new paint.

Painting the front door

Before-burgundy
First coat
Painting the front door
Two coats of teal
Painting done
New door color

I was on a roll! Once the shutters, door, wood and vinyl trim were painted (along with the deck rails), I decided to paint the garage doors and cement skirting around the house. The neighbor to our right had painted his garage door, changing it from white to a deep grey color, not long before I started this project and it looked SO nice! The color I chose is close to the dark grey trim on the eves of our house. It was a bit tricky to get it painted. I used the same tools as I did on the door – paintbrush and painting pad. Most of the painting was done with the garage door shut, but for the edges of the door, I stood on a ladder in the back of the pickup that was in the garage. Two coats of paint were needed to cover the white of the door.

Dark grey trim
Set up to paint garage door
New garage door color
Back garage door & deck painted

Painting the cement skirting around the house was not difficult but I did choose to do it in August in the blazing heat. When I work in the backyard on hot, sunny days, I use the deck umbrella for shade! I didn’t love crawling under the deck to paint, not knowing if I’d encounter spiders but I did it anyway and if there were spiders living there, they stayed away 🙂 That pipe that sticks out from the side of the house is to vent our furnace. When it was installed, the guy used a BLACK pipe! What?! You don’t have white??! Ugh! So, it got painted grey too!

Painting in progress
Cement before painting
Skirting painted

As with many of my projects, this one grew as I went along but we are so happy with the new color scheme! The teal, dark grey, and aqua really warm up the house! Since all of the updates were done with paint, this was an expensive way to add pizazz to the house!

Thanks so much for reading about this project! If you love this post, please leave a Comment – you’ll need to scroll down a bit to find the Comment box – and share with your peeps on Social Media 🙂