Chateau Exterior Makeover

I've begun working on the Chateau over the spring and summer as well. My plan was to paint the exterior a grey, and in order to do that, I had to remove quoins, trim, window trim. Wow what impermeable glue was used. I knew the individual quoins wouldn't be salvageable but I also was thrilled to get those from a fellow miniaturist who wasn't using them on her Chateau.

Prying off the quoins was an exercise in patience, elbow grease, a mixture of products to remove quoins and glue, and scraped hands (okay a screwdriver gone awry).

The next step in order to remove the glue was to take my palm sander to it. Outside it went, on a nice spring day, and first I tried several solvents, to no avail. So on with the sanding!

Once sanded and patched, it was time to give it a coat or 2 of paint. I chose a Benjamin Moor paint, and painted. Looked much better, and I let it sit for a few days while pondering.

It was nicer than the blue but not quite grey enough for me. I had a photo of one done by Lawbre years ago, saying on the catalog sheet they used the color I purchased from BM....but it still didn't look like the photo.

On the hunt, I found this newer paint - Coastal Texture Paint from Folkart. I applied it to a sample and this is what you see above.  I decided to give it a whirl. My first coat, I used a sponge brush and it was not easy to apply without getting brush strokes and inconsistent texture. I let it dry and then bought some texture tools and applied a 2nd coat...much better!

Here's the tools:

Here's the finished effect. I added a sealer - Mod Podge Ultra Matte.