How to paint shutters

While I would describe our house as brick, there is some woodwork and all the trim and shutters. And all of it was painted 1960s blue. Which is sort of a dusty blue, but not in any attractive sort of Swedish or French way. Just a dirty looking, sad blue.

Well this weekend, I finally got around to painting the trim around the door and started on the shutters. Shutters are such a bitch to paint. We couldn't easily remove them to spray them with ease, so I went with the ole paint brush. Here you see a "during shot," two shutters painted, two still blue. It was so going on the paint gloss black enamel latex paint was so odd. It was like painting with tar. One upshot to painting with tar is that you really only need one coat. And I felt very HGTV saavy because I asked the paint guy to tint the kilz primer so it would be gray instead of white.

On a sidenote, it's so sad to compare how the grass looks in these two pictures. The drought and heat of summer have not been kind to the lawn. Apparently, we may be on the cusp of a 10-year drought in Texas. As a result, I have no plans to resod the front. I think we are going to investigate xeriscaping over the winter.

Here is a close up on the entry way, featuring cream trim and a fancy new brass doorbell to match the door hardware!

Here is a tighter shot of the shutters. I used painted tape to mask off around the shutters to avoid painting the brick. They were a real paint to paint because the old paint was totally crumbly in parts and it's really hard to paint the louvers and not get drips. Hopefully no one will ever get up close and just stare at the shutters. They look 2390482903483290 times better from afar!