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We spent most of the day on scaffolding, taking advantage of a rare day without rain to try to finish the porch-eave project. We did really well, managing to move the rig, scrape, scrape, scrape, patch, sand, clean and get the primer coat on before, uh … well not before dark. Before we collapsed! And I set myself on fire only twice—you don’t want to know how I stopped the glowing paint globs from burning through my pants. Since kids started coming around in costume a couple hours before sunset, we set a monster-head-full of peanut butter pumpkins and cups on the steps and encouraged the costumed to take one (a naive directive to children faced with a bowl of plenty) since we were busy up high. Unfortunately, we had to miss a Halloween party to get all this done, but since we shirked work so much in September we were on the spot to make up for it. Tomorrow we need to get two coats of paint on and get 3 pieces of crown molding on, caulk a bit and pull down that scaffolding since it is partially on our neighbors’ driveway. We have fabulous neighbors. I knew they might be freaked out when we set up infringing on their space (though cars can still get by and park there) since they’d just seen the rig out front for about three weeks. So I put up a sign saying we’d have it down Monday night. We’re really shooting for Sunday night. Cross appendages, and Happy Halloween, everybody!
The front porch ceiling was once a vivid blue, as well as a more muted green. This is what I learned from spending the day stripping the original beadboard with the infrared paint remover.
Sky blue on porch ceilings is traditional, but this is a richer hue. And the green—well, someone who owned this house adored green; it pops up everywhere. The worst thing about stripping this stuff is all the staples from the installation of the aluminum that covered it for decades. I’m just really glad we decided to take this down. Stripping the roof base, which for obvious reasons needs to stay in place, is plenty of performance art for the neighbors. It’s a relief to be able to retreat to the backyard with a pair of sawhorses and a stack of beadboard and scrape away the day.
I’m just in from several hours standing on a crate perched on a semi-scaffold (one of those ultra-bendy ladders that can be positioned to function as a scaffold, though only to a certain height). And my, what one’s brain ponders when in that position (or maybe it was the lead paint fumes).
- Do contractors in earthquake-prone areas have to take out special insurance in case there’s a quake while they’re, say, 30 feet up on a ladder?
- You know the pigeon lady you see at the park? The one in my neighborhood did really well for herself and bought one of the cute bungalows across the street, so she doesn’t have to go to the park anymore. She just opens her front door periodically and tosses bird see out onto her concrete porch and steps. And the birds line her roof like icicles on the eaves of a house with ice dams.
- I kept expecting Ralph Nader to come storming up the walk, petitioning to stop me from endangering myself with my unprofessional setup and the children with my scraping of lead paint on a windy day. I plant sunflowers, Ralph—lay off! (And I use heat to keep the chips big and containable, and I collect them in an old paint can and bring them to the household hazardous waste days, I vac with a HEPA filter too before going in.)
Must enjoy toasty shower and whiskey sour now.
I would like to know how much time I have spent in my life looking for my favorite scraper. I would advise myself to buy another three of it, but it’s the one that came with the heat gun. I don’t even use it with the heat gun anymore because I usually choose the homemade infrared paint remover. One could also wonder how much time I have wasted blogging about looking for my favorite scraper. Ack.
