Meet the Zombies, Part 1

Now that certain things have come to pass, certain insurance policies (in fact companies too) have been eliminated, and a mortgage has been signed and dated in blood, I may speak freely about our dread horde of zombies.

Not that it was too much of a secret but we didn’t paint the Devil Queen’s whole exterior ourselves. We hired it out to two different guys, Zombie 1, Danny, and Zombie 2, Larry, and neither of them really worked out too well. In the final weeks before the appraisal, we fell back on our family, friends, and our own hands to “finish” the exterior paint.

We hired Zombie 1, Danny, in October 2006. He wasn’t our first choice. Our first choices were excellent painters on all counts, but we couldn’t afford them and they were booked for the foreseeable future. We asked Kenny if he could recommend anyone. At that point, he’d steered us to some top-notch folks for our tile, wiring, and drywall. We called Danny and he came out to look at the house. Danny definitely knew what he was talking about. He knew how to do the prep, priming, and painting correctly on all counts. His bid was reasonable and he gave us a definite timeline. We hired him.

Things started off well enough. He came to work everyday with “his woman,” and they scraped paint. After the first week or two, his attendance became sporadic. They’d leave early, show up late, or not show up at all. Then, he vanished for a couple weeks. Normally, we’d have fired him then, but we gave him another chance since Kenny recommended him. We probably shouldn’t have. Actually, I should say that I probably shouldn’t have. At this point, I was starting to take over all our contracting duties since Scarlet was burned-out by this point.

One of the big warning signs that you have a shit contractor on your hands is when you start getting lame excuses for their time MIA. You start getting stories about how they lost their wallet with $700 cash in it while deer hunting (who the fuck needs $700 to go deer hunting?), their pissed off ex-wife is after them, and what not. Now, it is possible that what they are telling you is actually true, but they key the story in such a way that you can hear this undercurrent of please-feel-sorry-for-me-you-stupid-chump-so-I-can-continue-to-dick-you-around. And, unlike someone like Kenny who calls when a disaster befalls him and tells you that he won’t be at work, they never call and only give you their sob stories after the fact. Anyhow, you probably get the idea.

Another thing that he started doing was trying to get us to buy expensive equipment like pressure washers, scaffolds, and ladders for him to use. Every couple of days I’d get the same line of bull-shit, “I’m still trying to find a pressure washer to borrow, but, if you could get one, I could be ready to paint much sooner.” The first time or two, I didn’t think too much of it and just dismissed it. After that it really started irritating me a lot. What kind of building professional shows up to work and then tells you to buy him the tools of the trade?

Eventually scaffolding and pressure washer show up. Progress crawled. Fall was preparing to change into a rainy winter. The time for exterior painting was rapidly coming to an end.

Finally, I had to have a chat with Danny. Since I’m passive aggressive to a fault and hate overt conflict, I said, “Look, the Bank is not happy with the progress on the house, and they want me to hire someone else so we can finish and close out the construction loan. I need to see some primer up on the house by Friday.” Really, this was basically true, but, at this point, it didn’t really matter to me whether it was or not. I get assurances from Danny that there will primer on such-and-such section of the house and I can see a wormy-fear in his eyes. Oddly, he seems genuinely worried about loosing the job. Weird. I certainly couldn’t tell from his work ethic.

I mention this to Scarlet later, and she says that she thinks he may have a problem: drugs, alcohol, or something that is interfering with his ability to work. “I don’t know what it is, but he’s not quite right. I’ll be glad when he’s gone, he makes me nervous.”

Friday comes and there is primer on the Devil Queen when I get home from work. Four pieces of siding have been primed. Four. No fucking way, you have to be shitting me. Four boards?!

So, I call Danny and get his voice mail. “Danny, this isn’t going to work, let me know what you final bill is and come get your stuff.”

Good Feeling

One of the best feelings in the world is coming home from work and finding that things are getting done.

The master bathroom ceiling is nearly ready to prime and paint.

I know it's not much to look at, but here are the first to rows of the last floor I hope we ever have to have installed. I have high hopes that this will be finished today or early tomorrow.

At the End of the Day

A very busy weekend to be sure. Easter was . . . let's just say that I've decided to call it "colorful." Why? Well, the location of the Easter Egg Hunt was determined by the conditions on someone's parole. Really, something about crossing county lines or something. Gotta love the in-laws that your in-laws don't really want to see.

But the weekend was colorful in other ways too.

Okay, sure. Most of that is white primer, so that isn't exactly colorful. But, it will be soon I hope. And, did I mention that I finished scraping down the living room and hall ceiling?

So much to do, so little time . . .

Coming to Terms with Paint Removal

I find the first hour of any involved home improvement project is the worst. It takes a lot of will power and effort to ignore the couch's siren call, the lure of insipid, mind-numbing television, or a long, intoxicated soak in the tub. If you can actually start the project, then you have to work at getting into the groove of what you're doing. Every task has its own rhythm and until you find it everything is a mess. But, once that first horrific hour has passed, you find your body moving in a relentless mechanical rhythm (unless you're doing plumbing or anything involving exact measurements). This is great because your mind can drift far away for a while.

I spent a lot of time doing my paint scraping dance on the top of a ten-foot step ladder the other night, and I couldn't help but think of poor Chris. In particular, there was this comment he left on a previous post:

"I'm having to swiftly come to terms with the idea of dry scraping as I'm going to have to do it to all of the exterior woodwork of the house. Any suggestions you have in terms of process would be hugely helpful I'm sure."

My first thoughts were pretty knee jerk. You know, the stuff most people would think of using for a project like this: hard liquor, hookers, and lots of wasp spray - unless they have something else in Canada. I don't know what you'd use to take care of a nest of Grizzlies roosting up on the eaves. A Gatling Gun maybe?

But, once I got past these superficial suggestions, I dug deeper into the philosophical meat of this problem. It occurred to me that there is one central fallacy around which everyone bases their approach to paint stripping or scraping: that there is a good and easy way to strip off old paint.

The stark and central truth is there is no good way to strip paint. None.

No, actually I lied. If you have money to burn, you can hire a whole team of trained monkeys scrape your house clean and sit out in the yard under a shade tree drinking mint juleps and reading the newspaper. That is easy. Well, conditionally. We're assuming that the monkeys actually know what they're doing and come to work.

Each and every method of paint removal suck in their own way. What you have to find is the method you prefer to use, learn to do it well, and just get it over with. Divest yourself of the idiot dream, the Easy Way, and embrace the truth in all its filthy glory.

Over the years we’ve work on the Old Whore, we've experimented with a number of different paint removing methods: spray-on stripper, paint-on stripper, heat guns, UV strippers, sanders (hand sanding, orbital, random orbit, palm, etc), grinders, eco-friendly strippers, and dry-scraping. And, do you know what I've found? If I had spent all that time actually scraping paint and not dicking around with the newest path of enlightenment, I'd probably have finished long ago.

I find that all paint removal techniques have four components on which they may be rated: ease, mess, speed, and cost. I won't break these down any more than that (unless someone wants more detail), because they seem fairly straight forward to me. And, my final conclussion to date is: dry scraping is hard work but it is cheap, fast, and occasionally easy. The mess is unavoidable, just jump in and wallow in it.

One thing I have noticed is a correlation between ease and speed. For instance, a heat gun is pretty easy to use. You flip it on, heat the paint, it bubbles, and it glides right off with a pass or two of the scraper. But, compared to dry-scraping it is a very slow process. In my experience, dry-scraping goes roughly twice as fast (or more) for me, but it wears me completely out after a couple of hours. There is definitely a trade-off here.

Anyhow, here are my "big" dry scraping tips:

1) Use a scraper with a small blade. Sure, it will take more passes to strip the paint, but I find that they are easier to control (fewer gouges) and you can exert more pressure because of the smaller surface area.

2) Sharpen your scraper often. Depending on how tough the paint it, you may find it necessary to sharpen your blade every 5 to 10 minutes. It sounds like a hassle, but your muscles will thank you. It is soooooo much easier to scrape with a sharp blade.

3) Wear thick leather work gloves. If you are doing it indoors, wear a respirator or mask at the very least.

4) If possible, always go with the grain of the wood.

5) Manage your expectations. No matter how bad your paint is in, it will take a very long time to get it all off. Don't get discouraged, it can be done but it will take a while. Persistence counts.

6) Know when call in the big guns. Sometime you will find a section of paint that will not come loose no matter how much you dig at it. Save yourself some grief and time, and move on to Plan B. At this point, the heat gun is my back-up of choice. Unfortunately, since there are lots of gaps between boards into hollow walls full of 100 years worth of potentially flammable shit, I usually opt for spray-on chemical striper. Or, I might just take a sander to it and feather out the edges and paint over it anyhow. Below is a picture of some paint that would not turn loose on the foyer wall it. Took me longer to get it down to this than it did to scrape half of the foyer ceiling.




Now, as the final disclaimer, I will say that I haven't done too much exterior paint stripping, but, from what I can tell, all of the same principles apply. Also, you might check with Greg over at The Petch House. I can't remember for sure, but I believe he dry scraped the whole Petch House.

Hope this helps Chris. And, good luck.

The Living Room Ceiling Part I

I made a good go of it, but I'm disappointed with my progress. This will definitely be a three evening job, not the two evening one to which I aspired.

Anyhow, here is the before photo.

Here is the ceiling after one hour of scraping.

And here is the ceiling after two and a half hours of scraping.

At that point, my arms gave out and it was time for bed anyhow.

Chris, I've got a dry-scraping post with tips in the works for you. Hopefully, I'll get it up by Friday.

Night of Ill Humors

Last night I just didn't quite feel well. I wasn't sick per se, I just didn't feel good either. Tired, stomach ache, wane, and aching muscles and joints. I got a late start last evening and didn't accomplish too much. A cat-nap, drugs, and half a pot of coffee helped quite a bit though.

Anyhow, this is what I did manage to do. First, I "tented" the living room in preparation for scraping down the ceiling.

Here is what the ceiling looks like now.

Here is the close up.

This stuff is really loose. Some of it pealed away with a dirty look. I originally thought this ceiling would be a three or four day project, but now I'm wondering if I could knock it out in two.

Here is how it should look when I'm finished. This is the foyer ceiling in case you care.

And, here is what I did with the rest of my time, striped and shellacked door hardware (sorry, not the complete set here).

Sorry, I can't find the picture of the door. It will close off the laundry room.

I love how the floor flows seamlessly from room to room, well worth the effort.

Tonight, without further ado, I shall assault and vanquish the living room ceiling.