Can't DIY prep/paint house fast enough for Codes Dept; need ideas

[April Friedl]

Over the winter, my local codes department informed me that I needed to paint my house ASAP or else I would be fined and taken to court.  The original date they gave me to have the house fully painted was April 1st.  Well, we had a terrible, long winter, and only a couple warm days in March, so I had to ask for an extension.  They gave me until May 1st.  Well, winter, stuck around until April 29th (extremely rare where I live), and so I had to ask for another extension.  They gave me until June 1st, and again until June 25th. With two jobs and extreme heat or rain, we are just not going to make it.  To make things worse, we had only 1 week of spring where I live.  The weather went from nearly constant lows in the 20's to nearly constant highs in the 90's within 2 weeks.  This is an extremely weird and awful weather year where I live.

It is just myself and my husband working on the house, and unfortunately, we are having to sand/grind all the way down to the redwood siding in most cases, which is taking forever (along with all the environmental precautions we are taking every time we work). We have also had to replace a door, repair wood rot on the garage door, replace posts, and other items as part of this project. I don't mind working on the house so much, but I hate having to deal with the codes department breathing down our backs.  

Anyway, all the codes enforcement officer wants to see is paint on all the wood surfaces, and then theoretically she will leave us alone.  They don't even look at the back of the house; they don't even seem to care if it is a terrible paint job (although I care).  We almost have 3 sides of the house 80% prepped for paint, but the 4th side of the house, which you can see from the road, has not even been ground or sanded yet. Since we have not prepped that side of the house yet, I am thinking about spray painting (with a can) the exposed wood areas, which are only at most 3% of that side of the house. We can probably get primer on the other two visible sides of the house in the next 5 days before the codes enforcement officer comes to inspect again.  After codes closes our case, we would grind/sand off the newly applied spray paint and prep that side of the house too (but probably after we get some real paint on the primed sides of the house).

One more thing to note, this probably all started with a complaint  from the former neighbor or realtor for the house south of mine (which already sold for $20K more than they asked for).  Codes did not blitz the neighborhood.   I know this because both neighbors in front of and behind my house have had huge external remodeling projects going on for years, without permits, and no work being done at all in 2018 so far.  The house across the street is missing shingles on as much as 30% of the roof. There are several duplex town homes on the block that also have had major siding projects (and rot) going on for a decade, only being touched a couple times a month.  It is odd how they target my house with so many serious, visible, time-sensitive issues going on with about a quarter of the houses on the block. Anyway, this is why I believe a complaint started it all, and codes will leave me alone if I can just get primer or paint on the parts of the house that they can see. 

Is this a really good idea or a really bad idea? Has anyone else had an issue like this before? What did you do? We really want to do this job right, but are not able to so with the deadline codes has given us, and the weather mother nature is throwing at us. I forgot to mention, the house is currently white, the new primer is white, and it would probably not be too hard to get a can of white spray paint that halfway blends in with the old white paint.

Although we have done lots of major house renovations over 15 years together, this is the first time for us prepping and painting the exterior of a house.