gutterman

So I wanted to put a coat of paint on the back door today. Simple enough. 20 minutes, half an hour TOPS, right? And then I could move on to painting windows and shit.

Well..... I get the paint out, and the brush with the curved handle... And the brush comb from Melfish, and newspaper and all that shit. But what's this? A little bubble in the paint. -pick pick- OH CRAP! It's a spot that is peeling. -scrape scrape- -scrape scrape scrape-

Wow. Who would have known that in the 1950s when this door was put up, it was common to paint with oil-based? "Everyone knows that the paint was oil-based back then!!!" you might say.

Of course, you would be right. Anyone in their right mind would know that in the 1950s they were using oil. But it looks like someone was not in their right mind, because immediately over that layer of beige oil-based paint is a layer of white latex. And then a layer of black oil. And then black latex. And then white latex.

So you might say to yourself "Self, how does he know the colors of all of the layers, and the makeup of the paint?" Well, I'll tell you. Because they were all peeling away from one another. But not in a nice consistent way, where you can just pull the corner of the door, and all the paint comes off. I mean, the paint was peeling in sections about the size of a nickle. Or maybe (in some places) the palm of my hand.

So, I pulled the door off the hinges and took it outside. I poured paint stripper all over it, and scraped and scraped and scraped. And scraped.

And then steel wool and turpentine. Then steel wool and denatured alcohol.

Then I put the door up in its naked state, because I want to be able to lock the house up tonight while I am in bed.

Tomorrow, it'll be oil based primer, and 2 coats of latex paint. Fuckin bitch.