Have you ever started a project you knew was doomed from the start?  This was one of those types of projects for me.  What was supposed to be done in a few days ended up taking two weeks.  I wanted black windows, and the DIY gods were not seeing it my way.

We have eight 8 ft windows in our great room.  They are Pella windows from Lowes.

We have four windows on one side and four on the other.

The natural light in this room is pretty amazing and I wanted to add a bit of punch to these bad boys, so I decided to paint the windows and the window sills black.

The sills are 8 inches deep and we have no plans to add trim so I was hoping the black would help them stand out a bit more and add something special to the space.

The start of the project should have been my first clue that this was not going to go smoothly….cue sad music…

The winter before, some of the guys had been helping with paint, and they used masking tape to tape off the windows.  In case you didn’t know, masking tape is NOT painters tape.  When I tried to peel it off, the tape came off but all of the glue stayed on the windows.  Then, I ran out of Windex….I ended up spraying the windows down with some watered down Mr. Clean.  Then I had to use Goo-Off to scrape the rest of the glue off.

Two days later,  all of the windows were squeaky clean and ready for the Hubby to re-caulk the seams.

I re-taped everything using Frog Tape, which works great by the way, and was finally ready to add some “make-up” to my windows.

I wanted to paint not only the sills but the windows themselves…and they didn’t like that very much.  (This pic is the first coat) Three coats later, and I finally had the results I was after. We think due to the colder temps on the windows, the caulk didn’t dry as well as it should.

On top of the paint not wanting to stay where I put it, there were lady bugs….

Yes people, there was an abundance of lady bugs on these windows, and they just would not get out of the way.  And on top of shooing bugs out of the way, these windows are 8 ft high, it was really hard to see where I was painting when the sun was shining.  I almost busted out my sunglasses.

And I did all of that on this…

This is a 12 ft ladder, and I had no choice but to go up and down and scoot it around about 50 million times just to paint some windows!!!

After a while, I figured out if I kept it on a small piece of carpet I was able to scoot it around a bit easier.

I was determined to not let a bunch of windows get the best of me.  I just worked the kinks out of my aching neck, and kept chugging along.  (It must be my competitive nature.)

I am beyond happy with the results.

The windows were amazing before, but the black adds just the right amount of awesomeness.

I have one more coat to add to the other four windows tomorrow, then maybe I will get a massage and a manicure….who am I kidding, I got floors to paint!!