After running around all weekend, entertaining guests and working on some killer new design projects (like this one!) by Sunday afternoon I was pretty pumped to prep and paint the porch in wickedly hot 95° plus temperatures. Pysch! Seriously, I wasn’t pumped at all.

Sometimes we have to do things even though we don’t want to (is that what the psychiatrist lady said to bratty little Sally on Mad Men? Which was AWESOME, BTW). Or maybe it came down to the recently purchased paint sitting on the porch for a week mocking me with our inefficiency.

The cool looking red robot? That’s a power washer. Best thing ever.

The ugly maroon paint? That’s about thirty years of ugly paint layers on the cement. Why couldn’t the P.O.’s just leave the cement alone? Jerks.

Check out my caulk. We caulked a bunch of cracks and holes and all the edging around the house. The boy swears by caulk and loves to prep everything with it because it totally works miracles. Caulk makes painted areas look a ton cleaner since it fills the gap between two unlike surfaces – which are usually riddled with cracks and weirdness.

Check out all that caulk!

We also scraped and sanded all the areas where the paint was flaking or scratched up. That was awesome fun.

So…

I gave up one important decision to The Boy. Of course, if you haven’t inferred this yet, I’m a bit of a design nazi when it comes to the homestead. That was always sort of my gig in the partnership. But The Boy has been going on and on and on about what color he wanted for the front porch. He wanted something dark, something to break things up, some color. My immediate reaction was CRAP, those are the three things I’m trying to avoid. I want light, lots of cohesion and a neutral backdrop for landscaping.

While we were painting his choice of color, he was like “You are going to put this on your blog and blame me if it goes bad.” Yeah, totally. Duh.

I mean really, he drinks tall boys of Bud Light (check out the photo evidence). This dudes choices are a bit suspect. I mean come on, he’s been with me for over eight years now and I’m a nightmare. So, like I said – suspect.

He picked Behr’s “Intellectual”. I kind of want to make clear why we always use Behr. It’s not because I love it, in fact I think it’s super crappy, but there is no Benjamin Moore or good paint within a fifty mile radius of the house and Home Depot is pretty much our main source for everything. Not a lot of demand in Hemet for the classier things, so we make due with the options available and the price is always right.

Anyhow, it was super hot and the paint was drying too quickly, so we had to wait till the sun went down to try and finish the first coat at dusk. We didn’t finish painting everything, but from what I’m seeing so far my big main concerns might have come to fruition.

I know it reads a bit darker because the sun was down, but that is DARK gray. Really dark. Like, looks like a battleship or a shark, dark.

We aren’t done obviously, that whole white bit of the planter will be painted out dark as well. I’m trying to imagine it with tons of Mexican Feathergrass billowing out of the planter and the landscape softening things up a bit…try imagining that too. I think I like it, but still feel a bit worried.

My question for you is this: Did The Boy do good? Or do I need to do the second coat in a shade similar to the roof?