Thank you for coming back to my 31 Days of Paint Series. If you would like to see it from the entire series just click HERE.
About a week before I started my 31 days of paint series, I was contacted by Sherwin Williams paint and asked if I would like to write about the painting of the Hollywood sign. My response was ABSOLUTELY! What’s more vintage than the Hollywood sign? And it’s being painted? Wait a minute… Uh, how??
How exactly do you go about painting 9, 45 foot tall letters on a hill side? I just finished painting the exterior of my house. It is 2 stories and is under 30 feet tall.
We were on ladders and even perched on top of our lower roof to reach the top. This is my Dad, scrapping the old paint while standing on the roof on a wooden ladder he made from scrap wood and tied to the fence. Yes, my Dad is crazy like that! We would have never gotten it done without the help of my parents. I was a nervous wreck, but I climbed up there to paint, eventually. The scrapping was the worst part. Painting took no time at all.
Our house turned out so good. I am so proud of it. My black shutters were once white and dingy. Krylon glossy black plastic spray paint livened them up. I gotten a lot of compliments on the pop of black.
So since I have some experience with painting a rather large object, I keep thinking the guys who are painting the HOLLYWOOD sign are
So I had to ask Sherwin Williams, “How do you go about painting some thing this big?” This was their response:
First a 100 percent biodegradable paint remover will be applied to the front of each letter, which will help to dissolve the existing coatings. Once dissolved, all of the existing paint will be carefully removed. The front of the letters will then be completely bare, leaving only corrugated metal. After the front of each letter is completely bare and pressure-washed, it will be primed with Sherwin-Williams Pro-Cryl primer, then painted with two coats of Emerald Exterior Satin Acrylic Latex paint.
The letters will be stripped, cleaned, primed and painted one at a time.
The back of the Sign will be scraped and sanded, then coated with the same Pro-Cryl primer and Emerald Exterior paint. How much paint and primer will it take? To coat the entire Hollywood Sign, it is estimated that it will take 275 gallons of paint and 110 gallons of primer. How will the painters access the Sign’s 45-foot-high letters? The painters will use custom swing stage scaffolding – hanging platforms similar to those used by window washers on high-rise buildings. The swing stages are 31 feet to 39 feet across – the full width of each letter. 
Today on the http://hollywoodsign.org/webcam you could see that they have began working on the lower part of both Ls. They have a long way to go from what I can see. I will be checking in with them next week to see how they are doing. I am anxious to see the letters stripped down to bare metal. At the end of the restoration project, Sherwin-Williams will have a time lapse video of the entire process that I will share with you. 
If you want to continue to follow the progress of this historic restoration project, just click this button in my sidebar.
Today on the http://hollywoodsign.org/webcam you could see that they have began working on the lower part of both Ls. They have a long way to go from what I can see. I will be checking in with them next week to see how they are doing. I am anxious to see the letters stripped down to bare metal. At the end of the restoration project, Sherwin-Williams will have a time lapse video of the entire process that I will share with you. 
If you want to continue to follow the progress of this historic restoration project, just click this button in my sidebar.
Happy Painting!
Repainting the exterior of a house is quite a daunting task. Would prefer to hire a painter instead. But you were able to do it, congrats!
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