Painting my garage to match the house

 Yesterday I finished it!

   My garage was put up before I bought the place, I have been here 36 years. It is just a large metal shed, big enough if empty for maybe a VW beetle. The former owner did motorcycle repairs in it I have been told.

   A few years back I rattle canned the front so it didn't look so bad from the street. It has gotten worse on the sides and the redwood duff piled up on the roof and sat there and rusted pinholes which over the last 3 years I have been fighting. The duff didn't fall off due to how the edge of the roof was held together. There was an angle that they screwed to the ridges and it hung down and blocked the duff from sliding off.

In these 2 pics you can see the angle where I had removed part of it and you can see the rust on the side.

At first I wasn't going to do anything except try to seal the roof. I bought 5 gallons of sealer after researching it.

    Supposedly this was going to cover my roof.

I got my neighbor Joe to come over and keep track if I fell off my ladder. He helped a lot more by filling the paint tray and doing some of the application! Thanks Joe!

   I started by blowing off the duff and using a 9" paint roller on a broom handle rolling the sealant on the roof. It was frustrating right away! The ridges on my roof are around 7" apart, the damn roller did not fit nicely and made it hard to get down on the sides of the ridges I got about halfway done and thought to cut down the roller to fit. That helped, but the roller tool was too wide and slowed things up. Frustrating!

   It took Joe and I about 3 hours to get the roof coated, we used less than half the 5 gallons! I knew it was going to take at least another coat.

First coat done.

     As I was sharing the pics with my wonderful girlfriend she suggested that I paint the garage to match my house.

I thought about it.

   A few days later I put the second coat of sealant on the roof and again Joe came over and helped! Thanks Joe! This time I had bought some 6" rollers and a 6' tool. It really made a difference and the whole roof was recovered is around an hour!

   Now we had used up around half of the sealant. I didn't want to not use it, after all I had paid for it! It was at this time i figured that I really needed to move that stupid angle so the duff would hopefully fall off the roof.

   I had some self-tapping sheet metal screws and with 2 drills and a couple of clamps set about taking off the angle and reinstalling it under the roof edge. I used extra screws to hold some of the ridges in place and keep the angle situated for building integrity.

You can see in the pics how I did things.

    Once this was all done, the next day I set about to sand off the rust and make the paint better to stick to. This was very tiring to do all this sanding! I used 80 grit.

    Next day I put on plastic tarp to help with overspray.

I wanted to get a single cover paint. I found a Behr direct to metal paint at HD. It said it was at my local(15mi) store. The lady there was very helpful and we were told they don't carry it, I had to drive another 15 miles to the next store to get it. Which I did. Not a happy camper.... Once there they matched my house paint, it is Coyote Mint leaf color.

The trim was taped off and the next day I got my airless sprayer set up and sprayed on a single coat. I barely had enough to do the job by tilting the pail so my pump pick up would be in the paint!

A day later I taped off the walls and painted the trim to match the Coyote Mint blossom on my house.

   And that's when I realized I needed to stain the garage deck to match my front porch deck......

But I wasn't done yet! I still had around a half bucket of sealant! I spent yesterday putting as thick a coat as I could on it. I still have enough to do another coat. I don't think I will put it on. Going up and down and standing on the ladder REALLY hurts my bad ankle. That and I don't think it will leak and I will keep the rest for emergencies.