Blending In the Trap Door

Last week, I posted about building a trap door. The construction part was fun, but the real magic took place after we prepped, primed, and painted the area.

The old siding we restored was a bit more damaged on the south side of the building as opposed to the north. Judging by our 100-year old siding, those UV rays are equally harmful to the "skin" of the house as they can be to people! The siding had actually weathered the most near the edges. In some places, the many layers of paint had worn away, and we discovered that the original siding of our home was not painted at all - but rather stained! And stained a nice dark shade of green. Very similar to the dark green we chose to put back on the front of the house. I wish i had a photo to post here, but they just didn't turn out very well.



Anyway, we had to prep these areas by filling the holes left behind by the 10-penny nails attaching the crappy vinyl siding to the house. There were a few other choice areas for wood filler as well, as you can see from the photos here.

After that, we used a nice primer from the Sherwin William store called Peel Bond, which is meant to help cover imperfections in exterior paint. it's actually meant to cover alligatoring paint, but I think you'd need several coats to get that done effectively. It does help encapsulate and smooth over rough patches though, giving the siding a somewhat glossy and resilient base for the final paint.

The final paint went on in a jiffy, and quickly blended in the newly exposed sides on the porch, with the rest of the front of the house (painted last year). And the trap door we installed just seemed to "melt away" into the wall.