Back To The Basics

I have 3 basic tasks to complete this week. I need to strip some paint, I have to do some paint stripping, and I need to remove some wood that is stuck under some paint. And if there’s still time I want to perform some wood/paint separation. I’ve found that if I break the big jobs up in to smaller tasks like this it makes it easier to get everything accomplished.

Here’s what I’m starting with.



That is 46 pieces of 1X4, T&G fir that came out of the now infamous 1922, 2-story addition I removed. Each piece is 47-inches long. The first job was to cut them down to 32-inches. Each has a little damage at each end where it was nailed to the wall so this will also clean up those bad ends. Then the fun begins. Hour after hour of joyful paint stripping. Yep, it doesn’t get any better than this.

I know everyone is going to be at the edge of their seats waiting for updates on the paint stripping. I can imagine that with so many people logging on to The Petch House Blog wanting to see the progress it could cause some problems with Blogger’s servers. I’ve taken the initiative to contact the good people at Blogger and alert them of this impending increase in traffic. I think if we all work together here people we can avert a catastrophe.

In other news totally unrelated to stripping paint off wood, I finished removing the paint form the cast iron brackets. They were too big to boil on the stove so I soaked them in a lethal mix of water and TSP for 4 days. After 2 days I took them out an hosed them off and then added more TSP and soaked for another 2 days. Yesterday I removed them from the caustic brine and hosed them off again. They look just like the day they were made. There are 2 brackets and they will make up part of the supports for the cantilevered counter.