The Slow Eradication of Hunter Green

Now, I’ve been pretty quick to knock what– at one time in the 90’s– was my very favorite of colors. I mean, there’s something about a nice dark green that reminds me of swimming at my grandpa’s country club, and pine needles covered in snow. I don’t hate it.

If there was just a little dark green on my house, I may not be so hell bent on getting rid of it. The problem is that the two pervasive colors in this house right now are Hunter Green and Pink. So just… no.

I mean, we’re talking Hunter green front door, and front porch decking…

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Hunter green back door and deck railings…

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Hunter green granite and floor tiles in the kitchen…

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Oh, and let’s not forget, the mecca of Hunter Green that is the master bedroom…

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And none of it is set against that crisp white that makes a dark green look so good. It’s just too much.

So while updating the green on the back door was probably the most fun I had last weekend, the real work was happening here:

before_trimming

After I fixed the missing section of railing I decided it was a good time to just finish this project up. You’ll notice in that picture that there is one oddly tall railing post and several of the fancy post caps are missing.

I’m sure there’s a technical term for those, but I don’t do fancy.

What I do do is power tools, and this seemed like a perfect job for my newest baby…

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It was a fanciness massacre up in here.

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When I was done? So much better…

after_trimming

Then I tackled the decking, which isn’t in horrible shape from a wear-and-tear standpoint, but had a lot of accumulated mildew and gunk.

before_stripping

I brushed on a deck stripper Friday night, which sounds way more scandalous than it actually was…

stripper_on

The jug claimed that this was a no-scrape product, but clearly they’d never met 20 years of mildew before. It required some scraping.

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Also, cautionary tale…

melted_deck_pad

Deck stripper will dissolve the shit out of your deck stain application pad, so don’t try to get cute and use it for the heavy chemicals.

And it also eats through metal…

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So probably I should have been wearing gloves and perhaps a full-body hazmat suit when applying it, but my fingers still contain actual skin, so it turned out okay in the end. Plus you can’t argue with results.

stripping_after

Not perfect, but good enough for a deck that’s going to be torn down in a year or two. I’m going to put a darker semi-transparent stain on the decking to finish it off.

But before I do that I wanted to get rid of that hunter green on the railings, which, conveniently, is one of the items on my get-my-money-back-from-the-bank list.

I took a cue from the front porch and just went with plain old white:

white

All of the sudden this deck feels to me like it belongs on a beach house, and, amazingly, the fact that it’s weathered and warped doesn’t bother me so much anymore. That, my friends, is the power of white paint.

Now if I can just get a few dry evenings this week I may be able to finish up the other side, and then I’ll be moving on to bigger messes. Like this…

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The fun never ends.

 

20 Responses

  1. I share your dislike for Hunter green! It is everywhere! Including Cleveland. When I purchased my house everything was a flat white but upon further inspection you could see faint green tinges on the walls, the baseboards and the interior doors. It was on the basement floor, the exterior doors and the awnings. I have eradicated from everything but the basement.

  2. I agree your hunter green had to go! There was an awful lot of it and it was faded and chalky! The crisp white is much better!

    Stripping your deck boards reminds me of when I first moved into my house. Previous owners had painted every square inch of wide oak trim and I had this grand idea that I was going to strip every last piece of it. What a fool I was. Half way into one doorway I realized just how much work is involved with refinishing wood! No surprise that almost all my trim is still painted 11 years later!

    1. I feel that exact way about the decking on the front porch. I want so badly to get it down to the bare wood, but I tried using a paint stripper on it last weekend and… whew. I don’t think I have that many hours.

      1. It is so tedious! I am just finishing a 6 foot wide oak pocket door. It is going to be beautiful but it will probably be the last project I refinish!

        1. I did about 30 feet of 9″ wide baseboard and two doors in a bathroom a few months ago and thought it was never goona get finished. Talked me right out of tackling that in any more rooms.

  3. No wonder you find critters in your quarters! The mud room door is wide- a###ed open while you’re painting all whitey on the porch! If I sauntered by an open door, I’d go inside, too! (LOL)

    1. I haven’t decided if I’ll rebuild the deck using the existing supports (which are all still fine), or if it will just turn into stairs to the back door since the sides of deck don’t get used much right now.

      I’ll probably wait to see how I use the space over the next year.

  4. Wow – amazing transformation – now you’ll have to get those fancy little umbrellas to put in your drink for when you sit on your new beachy deck!

  5. Wouldn’t it have been easier to rent a good pressure washer to clean that deck?

    1. It was a matter of timing. I expected the stripper to work without scraping so I started it Friday night and my neighbors weren’t around so I could borrow their pressure washer until Saturday. It seemed like a more efficient use of my time to just get ‘er done, but I did use the pressure washer on the front porch and siding.

  6. The white looks much better! I personally HATE green – of almost any shade, but especially Hunter Green. Comes from wearing a green uniform everyday for about a thousand years. But because of the greenish tint of the glass tiles I just put in the border of my bathroom I actually ended up painting my bathroom a sage color. I am getting used to it, but at one point I had about 10 different color swatches on the wall and was determined it WAS NOT going to be green. Nothing else worked with the tiles though.

  7. Wow, that white paint makes that look a thousand times better. It doesn’t even look like the same deck. Time well spent.

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