Chemical Greg

I’ve got to strip the two doors off the top part of the Frankenstein Hutch. They have 3 panes of original wavy glass that I don’t want to break. The first thought was to remove the panes and use the heat gun. The trouble is they are put in with putty instead of the wooden stays you sometimes see for indoor use. I don’t want to risk breaking the glass trying to chisel out the putty, so this means I’m going to resort to chemical strippers.

This is a tough choice because I love my heat gun. It has almost become an extension of my arm. I’m like some kind of heat gun enabled Borg from the old Star Trek TNG series. I don’t dare say it out loud, but I once thought about saying, “Resistance is futile” to the paint as I apply the heat gun and strip it off. I’m a bit of a pencil-necked geek, but I’m not ready to take that next step in my evolution in to Geekdom that I am willing to start quoting Star Trek out loud when no ones around. I will happily do it when others are around if I think the campyness of it will get a laugh, but not when I’m alone. That is just too weird.

So it’s time for an evening of chemical cocktails. I like the really caustic stuff. I am way too impatient to wait the several hours or days for the environmentally friendly stuff to do its job. Unless I end up with irritated skin from a few splashes I know I’m not using the right stuff. I may die of exposure at some point, but at least I’ll get the job done quickly.

Actually it shouldn’t take too long. The doors are 80% glass and I’m not going down to bare wood. I just need to get off the paint that looks like it was put on by Jackson Pollack. In fact, I once wondered if maybe my whole house was painted by Pollock. It would be worth a fortune. Perhaps I should contact the MOMA in San Francisco and have some of the woodwork appraised before I strip everything.