A New Kind of Scraping

Having finished removing the wallpaper and stabilizing the plaster walls, plus rewiring a couple of bits if really scary electrical work, we were ready to remove some of the pinkness. Noel spent a couple of hours yesterday with heat gun and scraper, sliding this stuff right off the wall.

We're pretty sure none of this paint has lead in it, if only because it's not the same colour as the paint that we know does have lead in it (lead, you see, was a pricey addition to the paint to improve adhesion, and nobody seems to have chosen the pricey upgrades on this house, ever). But we're being safe about it, anyway: respirator, ventilation, and containment. When we get done with gross scraping, we're going to sand the surface with a special sander with a collection bag.

The wood's in pretty bad shape. Lots of gouges and scrapes, and in some places they seem to have "repaired" those by just sort of filling them in with paint. But we don't need it to be pretty. We just need it to not be PINK.

Technorati Tags: paint removal, painting, lead paint

posted by ayse on 01/28/08