One of the projects we started last year, was the exterior of our “Little A Frame in the Big Woods.”

To see the before photos of the interior, go HERE.

The wood siding needed some love. So we decided to go with black paint. The plan is to one day do a black roof to match. It’s quite the change from our white farmhouse, but I love it!

The best new tool investment we’ve made in years is the Graco Magnum X5 Airless Sprayer. We got the extension rod tip for the hard to reach heights of our house. It made this seemingly impossible project a breeze. The only reason we didn’t get it done in one day was because we kept running out of paint.

We are hoping to do more intensive exterior work this coming summer, but it made such a huge difference to add paint.

We also added a porch ramp to the front deck.

Painting would have been so easy if it weren’t for the drop off cliff next to our chimney. That part made it impossible to use a ladder.

We just kept going, section by section, until it was all painted.

After we finished the siding, we also painted the deck with “Deckover” from Home Depot in the same “black” color to match. The jury is still out on how good it holds up, but it looks so much better now.

Since we had the ladders up, we decided to add some LED patio lights from Ollny.

It looks so much nicer. I am looking forward to doing better landscaping (we need to fix some draining issues first, thus the gravel near the front door) And a black roof will make it look so sharp!

This cozy space has been so nice to enjoy as a family in the summer and fall months.

I’m actually amazed that we got this much done, all by ourselves.

I built these Adirondack Chairs (based off of Anna White’s plans), and we grabbed some logs from the yard, added the glow of candles, and ta-da!

This year we are going to add more chairs.

Below is a video I created showing a few detailed glimpses into the painting process: