Not gone, but wishing I were...

My dry spell of posting has a light at the end of a dust filled tunnel.

Here's what has been zapping my energy and consuming my grinding days for the last couple of weeks.


Sorry for the un-neighborly mess, but it seems the previous owners of our 114-year old house neglected to scrape the paint on the clapboard siding down to the wood before repainting...ever.

So my F-i-L and I are taking grinders in hand, along with a few dozen boxes of 40-grit flap discs, and attacking the caked-on, solidified, and Oklahoma-weather hardened poor-excuse-for-paint that coats our humble abode.

Some interesting exchanges from drop-in visitors (fascinated by our daily progress) have taken place, some humorous, some irritating.

The most reflective conversations usually start something like this..."Hey, they are really making progress on your house," or "Wow, they are scraping your house clean, aren't they?"Problem is, there is no "they." There is only we...my F-i-L and I.

And scraping is hardly the most accurately descriptive word I'd use in describing the process we've had to undergo to remove the mother-of-all old paint from this old house.

We went to 40-grit flap discs when the 60 just got gummed up after several passes down a couple of clapboards. My F-i-L has resorted to using a propane torch and/or heatgun to melt down the several layers of resin-like coating that seems to occupy the north side walls. And I had to finally retire my new wonder tool that I specifically purchased for the paint removal duties on the house when the specially formulated 3M pads made for the tool ended up costing me more to purchase in the mass quantities that my housepaint from h#ll required, than a day-laborer with a scraper and sharpening stone would set me back.

Inch-by-inch, foot-by-foot, board-by-board and wall-by-wall, I curse the previous owners of my house in their neglectful ways of paint preparation and vow with every uncovering of naked wooden clapboard that no new paint will be applied to that which was applied with malice and maliciousness by a previous mortgage holder.

Why, oh, why doesn't Earl Scheib paint houses...