How to Paint Vinyl Siding & Pool Shed Makeover

The best solution for painting vinyl siding to make it last and an inexpensive exterior pool shed makeover.

We came, we saw, we busted out every money saving trick we could to conquer the pool shed.

UPDATE: See the final pool reveal here!

And we showed it who’s BOSS!

Oooooooh aaaaaaaaaaah.

That beige vinyl siding couldn’t defeat us, y’all. We might have lost 5 pounds in sweat painting this sucker, but it. was. worth. it! The old beige stuck out like a sore thumb next to the new pool liner.

When I shared in my Instagram Stories during our before backyard tour that we were painting this vinyl siding, there were a few naysayers. But I am here to tell you IT IS POSSIBLE TO PAINT VINYL SIDING! Can I get a hallelujah?!

I’m kind of a nerd and research home improvement methods to death before we start any project, so in my search for a solution, I discovered that Sherwin Williams carries a paint color line called VinylSafe. It’s exactly as the name sounds.

You can use other regular ol’ exterior paints on vinyl siding too, but you’re usually limited to only paint a shade or two lighter or darker than the existing color because the sun can cause warping otherwise.

But with the VinylSafe color line, there are specific colors you can choose from that will not cause that issue.

This isn’t a sponsored post. This isn’t an affiliate thing. This is literally just me passing along something cool that I found in hopes that it could help some of y’all. 🙂  I’d want someone to do the same for me if it meant saving hundreds or thousands of dollars on home renovation.

(Okay, fine. I’ll put an affiliate link to our power washer and paint sprayer. That cool? Full disclosure.)

Supplies Used:

• Power washer
• Large paint brush (or paint sprayer if you want the process to go even faster and/or you have a really large area to cover)
• Simple Green Pressure Washer Detergent
• Sherwin Williams VinylSafe paint (We used the color Pepper Shake from the VinylSafe color line in a gallon of Sherwin Williams’s Emerald formula.)
• Wide putty knife or flat foam board for painting around edges/trim

The Steps:

1. It’s all pretty straight forward, but just in case you don’t know, be sure to follow the directions on the detergent and pour into your pressure washer.

2. Spray down your vinyl siding with the detergent and then go back over your siding with 100% water in your pressure washer to rinse.

3. Let your vinyl siding completely dry.

4. Then, apply the VinylSafe colored paint. Robert decided to use a large paint brush for this, but if you prefer to, a paint sprayer would work well too.

5. To help paint around trim, hold the edge of a large putty knife up against it as you paint so that you don’t have to use painter’s tape.

The paint worked in one coat! Woot!

Robert painted the trim and doors in Behr Ultra Pure White to match the trim on our main house, and we hung up these vinyl black shutters to make the shed look more polished.

For the window boxes, Robert built them out of scrap wood we already had from some old fencing. Besides the actual flowers and plastic planter liner inside, they were totally free to make using materials we already had!

And we replaced the old door knobs with aged brass knobs on the two shed doors as well since they were rusty and loose.

All in all, we spent about $275 on this entire shed’s makeover for paint, shutters, window boxes, and door knobs. Boom!

Not bad, huh? It looks brand new!

For now, it houses all of our lawn equipment and pool floats and toys, but a few years in the future, we hope to turn it into a little snack shack / outdoor bar area. That’s a story for another day though.

We won’t get into how chaotic the organization situation is inside, but we’ll save that for later too. Just look at the pretty red, white, and blue flowers and pretend you don’t see those pool noodles in the window. ‘Kay? 😉

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