Stuff
Tomorrow is Halloween, and our neighborhood is participating again, as we have in the past. It is always fun to see the kids around the neighborhood on their little sugar highs. 🙂 We always have the “kids” who seem like they are closer in age to us than the actual kids, and whose “costume” consists of a hoodie. They are the ones who tell us that they are dressed as “a basketball player” or “joe diddy the ho-master” or whatever. I always give them a hard time, then make sure to stay up late to avoid the potential for egging/abuse later. This year, we have a very special selection of candy for these folks. Instead of the sugary chocolate that everyone else is getting, we have some little tiny mints or something. I was thinking about giving them rocks, but then worried that some of these folks would actually try to eat them. Then there’d be trouble, and we don’t want any of that.
I’m slowly starting to feel better. I’m hoping that I might be able to do some work around the house this weekend. We really, really, really, really want to be finished with the living room by Christmas. That means that I seriously need to get cracking on paint stripping. It was too hard to breathe with the respirator on this past weekend, so I’m hoping that I can deal with it this weekend.
I also need to spend some time to fix the last of the pages that I moved over here from the old houseblog. There are only a few left to fix, but I need to get working on that, too.
Fun times.  Here’s an interesting picture for the day:Â
jonathan
4 Comments
elwood_jetson
Why did you need a respirator?
Jonathan
Since there is a high chance that one of the layers of paint contains lead, we’re not taking chances. We’re treating the whole paint stripping process as if the paint contained lead, just to be safe. That means that we’re using half-face respirators with organic/solvent and fine particulate filters. The vacuum that we’re using has a HEPA filter installed, and we use water to help control the dust when we empty it (we couldn’t afford the fancy auto-bagging HEPA vacuum yet). The paint “droppings” are dropped into metal cans as they come off of the scrapers, and those are disposed of promptly to avoid turning that paint into dust by crumbling or crushing them. We clean up areas as we go, keeping down the possibility of tracking paint out of the room. We also try to practice “clean-room” techniques: Wearing a different pair of shoes in the room, wearing clothing that we designate for paint stripping work, washing those clothes in a separate load, showering when we’re finished, etc. Not all of these are practicable all the time, though. For instance, we need to take breaks once in a while, and showering for every break is not practical. We try to do our best, though. We also have a ventilation fan that exhausts air from the room to the outside, and we open an additional window to feed the room with outside air while we’re working on paint stripping. That makes it a little cold in the room, but it’s pretty necessary to avoid having the rest of the house overcome by fumes.
I hope this answers your question.
jonathan
elwood_jetson
Wow! I had thought of remodelling as hard work before, but never considered it as something that could potentially kill you. Well you’re definitely taking it seriously. Good luck, and thanks for the details.
Jonathan
Heh. Well, the lead probably won’t kill one directly. However, it has the potential to cause all sorts of neurological issues in the people working with it, but also (and probably more importantly) young children who later come in contact with the dust or residue.
I tend to put remodeling and restoration in two different classes. What we’re trying to do is a restoration. In a remodeling situation, it would probably be easier (and cheaper, in terms of man-hours) to demo the trim and replace it. That’s just about impossible to do with 100+ year-old woodwork, though. Even if it were possible, that’s not the point for our work–we want to restore what is here, not replace it. There are some places where we’re going to have to replace things due to irreparable damage or because an element is missing, but we’re going to stick as close to historically accurate as possible.
jonathan