Repainting the basement windows

Not long ago, I noticed the paint on the outside of our basement windows had started peeling. I am not sure when they were last painted, but the finish of the paint was very dull and faded. Who uses flat paint on trim? (It’s this way on our entire house, unfortunately.)

Anyhow, I thought repainting the windows would be one minor step toward visually cleaning up the “ugly side” of our house. Check it out.

Ugly, right? Garage doors, utility boxes, satellite dish, trash/recycle cans, air conditioner, etc. Ugh. Well, there’s not much I can do about most of that, but I sure can repaint the basement windows.

I chose white 1) because the rest of our windows are white and I thought it would look more cohesive if they matched, and 2) I already had a quart of exterior white paint.

I washed the windows with a garden hose. After they were dry, I scraped the loose paint off, wiped them off and gave them the first coat of paint.

That’s when the stains showed up. That wouldn’t really matter so much if I had been using a dark color, but I wasn’t. And I wanted to stick with white, so my next step was to buy some stain-blocking primer.

I did the whole windows once, but the stains seeped through. I covered the stained areas three, four, five times and the stains still showed through!

I decided to just move forward and when I painted over the primer, the stains did not reappear. Success! Another final coat of paint and I called it done.

Looks better, right? I know, I know, not drastic. Baby steps. I painted three windows total. There’s a fourth on the other side of the house that I haven’t tackled yet because it’s an actual functional window that hasn’t been nailed shut and I need to make sure I can paint it without painting it shut.