I have been very busy stripping doors in my home, buffets, window ledges, basment doors, you get the idea. It's been an ongoing stripping summer of me slaving away, scraping off peelaway on my weekends when the kids are with Toby. I have a brick pointer coming to power wash and point three sides of the house (it desperately needs this and I can't wait to post before and after pics of the change) and he said that he'd be coming this week so I spent 9 hours saturday and 10 on Sunday scraping 100 plus years of paint off the front porch). Apparently no one thought to scrape the paint underneath before putting another coat on, so this porch was a textured, chippy wonder. When we moved in the porch was a lovely diarrhea brown which Toby quickly painted a soft green. It was great, until it started chipping off.
I do not exaggerate when I say there are A LOT of chippy layers on this porch
Before. Multiple layers of green, brown, light grey, darker grey, light blue, clear sealer, dark green, and yet another grey paint. Sort of like counting the rings on a tree but more toxic.
After. You might have to enlarge these to get the idea that the porch surface is now much smoother, it's various shades of grey (most likely lead based) paint which I'm hoping will come off more when they powerwash the bricks. The pointer is really friendly and said I'm welcome to powerwash whatever I want. I felt like Homer Simpson on seeing a donut, ahh powerwash.
Scraping the paint layers off the cement (baseboard? I don't know what to call the 6 inch lip of concrete that meets the brick on the front of the house) was the hardest part of this project, which consisted of two rounds of peel away and then two rounds of smartstrip on each section of the porch I did. Yep four steps per square inch, plus vigorous scraping after each step - ugh! No wonder my fingers felt like they were ready to break off at the top digit by Sunday night.
There are various shades of grey here but the porch is now smooth and I'm hoping the powerwash will even it out more to a uniform look. There's no way I'm painting this porch after scraping all that paint off.
And this is what my hands look like after wearing latex gloves for 19 hours in two days. Do enlarge to see it in all its flaky glory. Do you think this means I have a latex allergy? It happens whenever I wear the gloves for prolonged periods during my stripping weekends.
I do not exaggerate when I say there are A LOT of chippy layers on this porch
Before. Multiple layers of green, brown, light grey, darker grey, light blue, clear sealer, dark green, and yet another grey paint. Sort of like counting the rings on a tree but more toxic.
After. You might have to enlarge these to get the idea that the porch surface is now much smoother, it's various shades of grey (most likely lead based) paint which I'm hoping will come off more when they powerwash the bricks. The pointer is really friendly and said I'm welcome to powerwash whatever I want. I felt like Homer Simpson on seeing a donut, ahh powerwash.
Scraping the paint layers off the cement (baseboard? I don't know what to call the 6 inch lip of concrete that meets the brick on the front of the house) was the hardest part of this project, which consisted of two rounds of peel away and then two rounds of smartstrip on each section of the porch I did. Yep four steps per square inch, plus vigorous scraping after each step - ugh! No wonder my fingers felt like they were ready to break off at the top digit by Sunday night.
There are various shades of grey here but the porch is now smooth and I'm hoping the powerwash will even it out more to a uniform look. There's no way I'm painting this porch after scraping all that paint off.
And this is what my hands look like after wearing latex gloves for 19 hours in two days. Do enlarge to see it in all its flaky glory. Do you think this means I have a latex allergy? It happens whenever I wear the gloves for prolonged periods during my stripping weekends.
1 comment:
is it wrong that my first thought is "during your stripping weekends. hee hee"
the porch looks AWESOME! i love that kind of industrial look.
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