South Stuy Reno

A couple years ago I proclaimed that the last remenant of purple would be purged. Little did I know that the purple would cling desperately and that it would take us close to a year to eradicate it. Things started off well enough. I was feeling confident.

I had all kinds of scrapers and dental tools.
I had all kind of chemical strippers.
I have a heat gun and the silent paint remover and I had EXPERIENCE stripping the downstairs newel post and the bannisters. I felt READY.

Here she is in all her purple glory:

First I hit the flat surfaces with the silent paint remover. Then I hit the curved ones with a regular heat gun. The seasons changed. The paint stayed put.

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I slathered it with citrus strip. I scraped and scrubbed with 3 kinds of steel wool and denatured alcohol. I repeated all of the above. I called in T for reinforcement. He tried to defeat the post using his Army-trained powers of focus and sat for hours at a time picking out minute bits of paint from deep crevices and details. We toiled. The seasons changed. We toiled some more.

Our tenants shouted encouragement as they departed the building for fun in the night and fun in the day. It defeated us for a while. We had to take a break. The economy tanked. Bad things happened. It sat there mocking us for months.

We found the strength to scrape again. T and I worked together. We discovered more nooks and crannies. We discovered a cool eggshell-thin tortoise laminate over the mahaogony. We decided that was ok….at least for now.

We cleaned it up with denatured alcohol and sanded the heck out of it. And sanded it more. Did I mention how many nooks and crannies there are in this sucker? NOT easy to sand (just in case you were wondering).

But finally, all of a sudden--we were done--or rather we were finished doing all we were going to do. I joyously slathered it in teak oil. It joyously let it seep into its old dry self. We are coexisting peacefully now. Peace on Earth. Happy 2010.