DIY

People in Black Houses

Like most, I love Pinterest. There are few things better than pinning late into the evening, with a glass of Malbec in hand and a pooch on your lap. It’s just so easy and pretty but the thing that Pinterest does best is show you what your life/ house/ style COULD be like. Sure your living room is nice BUT look at how utterly DIVINE Gwyneth’s is!? Yes your eyebrows are fairly even BUT just look at Cara’s, they’ve made grown men weep.

Anyway, after a long night of pinning I realised that it’s fun and all but it’s not making any real life difference to my life. So I decided to stop and start planning a real-life DIY Project.

Our house is still in that nearly-done stage and will continue to stay that way for a while I’d imagine, having said that the ground floor is done. Pretty much… apart from the back of the house. When we first moved in, we had a lot of work to do and part of that included installing new windows and doors into the back of the house. Installed they were and they all work very well indeed but the outside of the house suffered, cement and concrete splatter etc. got on the walls and we didn’t really do a whole lot about it, resulting in a not-so-hot exterior. But who cares right? It’s only the back of the house, passersby can’t see the full manky extent of it so …meh. However as it turns out we use the back garden quite a bit and after another summer passed by with myself and the Bear constantly trying to avert our eyes from the back façade we decided to take action. We were going to paint the house and we were going to paint it black.

I know, the STATE.

Black? Black. Beautiful Matt Black. After dabbling with the moody hue in the hall not too long ago we knew we loved it. Still not convinced eh? Okay, just look at these images of black facades! JUST LOOK AT THEM. And yes, they are all from Pinterest.

So we put on our old, painting clothes and popped by the Crown Decorating Centre on Camden Street and decided on Sandtex Black Matt Masonry paint and then we bought a coffee because we wanted to delay the doing of the actual work.

PAINTING THE EXTERIOR OF YOUR HOUSE

YOU’LL NEED:

– Black Paint (we recommend Sandtex Black Matt Masonry paint from Crown Paints)

– Small & Larger Paint Brushes

– Roller
– Ladder
– Duck Tape
– Metal Primer

Music to work to: I’m not going to lie to you folks, this is going to take longer than just one song. So I’d suggest finding some high energy 80’s beats like Eddie Murphy’s Party All the Time to keep you going

Awesome Femme we are channelling: We’re channelling the spirit of Yayoi Kusama today. Why you ask? She’s a kickass painter and you know…we’re painting.

First thing to do is to cover your floor — if you’re painting around tiles or similar – I recommend old newspapers. After this have a look and see if you have any metal piping that you want to paint as you’ll need to prime these first before you can paint them. So get to priming!

Prime time!

After this you should paint a base coat on the walls – with our house, most of the exterior already had a coat of white (ish) paint on it so we didn’t need it but in the areas without paint (like below) we mixed some of the Black Paint with water and used this as a base.

Once this dries you can start the first coat, we painted the larger areas first with the roller and then when it came to around the windows & doors we taped them up with duck tape first and then used the smaller paint brush for detail. I would suggest removing the duck tape as soon as you finish painting as you’ll be able to wipe away any wet smudges.

When the first coat dries, you can paint the second. This coat is much easier to apply and just ensure that if you are painting in a darker colour that you cover everywhere — you don’t want to notice little white spots in a few days. And then boom, your house is painted! You no longer have to make excuses as to why you can’t bring friends out the back of the house. Y A Y!

And here it is — we LOVE the black. It covers a multitude — our walls certainly wouldn’t be the smoothest. We’ve never had the audacity to make that claim, but with the black paint — the walls look SO smooth and we adore the overall cohesive look. There’s still more to do of course, we plan on laying tiles and fitting wooden benches in the yard and what not but for right now, we’re happy.

Here’s the BEFORE AND AFTER.

S x