Playhouse Makeover

A little over three years ago (when I was pregnant with Carolyn) our neighbors across the street decided to get rid of their old playhouse, and gave it to us for FREE! My favorite word! Weeellllllll, there was a reason it was free, it was very much weather/sun beaten and needed some love. We had full intentions of fixing it up, but a certain little lady entered the world and we forgot all about it. Happily she doesn't mind what it looks like and has loved playing in it, but we decided we'd waited long enough, time for a playhouse makeover!

The playhouse was the perfect project to test out our new paint sprayer. We bought it with several future projects in mind: bathrooms, kitchen, and all the doors in the house are going to be painted a nice clean white; I'm so over this 1980's honey oak. My dad even gave us his old air compressor to get the ball rolling!

Take some last parting looks at the old house, actually I wish I'd taken pictures earlier, the front two windows had been so sun damaged that they were crumbling apart were broken in parts and kept falling off the house. Ben had to build new windows out of wood.

Here's a list of the paint colors we chose to go with, now please please please don't judge me on these color names, never in a million years would I have picked them out based on this, I just liked the colors, okay:

• White Primer: Zinsser Bulls Eye 123
• Grey/Beige Interior: Behr Premium Plus Exterior Satin Enamel - Natural Grey
• Blue Siding: Behr Premium Plus Exterior Satin Enamel - Skinny Jeans
• Grey Roof: Behr Premium Plus Exterior Satin Enamel - Night Club
• White Trim: Krylon Acrylic Latex Enamel in Satin Indoor/Outdoor (came for free in our garage when we bought our house)

The paint sprayer we are using is the Husky HVLP and Standard Gravity Feed Spray Gun Kit, it came recommended by Ben's uncle who is a professional house painter, this was our first time using it and we were quite happy with it, for the playhouse Ben used the standard gravity feed spray gun.

The first thing we did was give the whole thing inside and out a coat of primer. We chose to go with the Zinsser Bulls Eye 123 because of it's reputation for being good for wood and plastic. It did great on the plastic, but the wood was coated in a stain that keep seeping through the primer, so my husband had to do several coats on the spots that showed.

Ben started with a little test spray on the outside but then quickly decided it would be smart to work from the inside out.

Here's a little picture of his work set-up, the compressor is on the far right and a table with supplies is nice and out of the way.

After priming everything he moved on to painting the interior a grey-beige (or greige) color, I chose to do this because I feared white would show the dirt but I didn't want the interior color to show too much, it's a nice disappearing color.

Then it was time for the roof. Originally he used a grey color that we had on hand in the garage, but I decided it had too much green in it and made him buy a new shade.

To save himself from having to tape and paper off the whole house he simply held a piece of cardboard under the edges of the roof while he moved around painting - it worked perfectly. Also you'll notice at this point he he let me talk him into wearing painting mask, his original plan to was to wear an actual gas mask (probably from WWII), but apparently it was really hot in the sun...

The next two steps were painting the siding blue and the trim white (trust me, even though the primer makes it white already this really stepped it up and finished it off).

Also, you'll notice that the entire playhouse is sitting on top of cardboard. That's because originally the playhouse had no floor, my brother sweetly gave us some leftover laminate flooring he had, so Ben built a little frame for it to sit on top of to help keep the dirt out. Well, he never actually attached the house to the foundation, so we just lifted it right up and put the cardboard between the two!

Looks like a brand new play house, right!?!?!

We bought some cheap paver stones from Home Depot for a little over $1 to create a nice little path, Carolyn loves hoping from step to step.

I had several friends comment, "I didn't know the playhouse had a bay window!" That's because it just disappeared before and now it stands out beautifully!

The playhouse was quite popular at Carolyn's 3rd birthday party (post on that coming soon). 

I'm so proud of my husband Ben for doing all the hard work and painting this baby up (I was 7m pregnant at the time so I didn't want to be near all the paint, and also I was on Carolyn keep away duty). It's amazing what a little bit of paint can do!