Tuesday 5 March. Today we finished re-painting our railings at long last. We started work on them a week ago when the weather turned sunny and dry and we thought it would take a only couple of days' work.
Problem was that because they are as old as the house - 105 years - they have been painted many times in many colours over the years and now the paint was very thick and cracking up with rust showing through. Our plan was to get rid of all the loose cracked paint but, once we got started, it became clear that we had to get almost all of the paint layers off.
We tried caustic paint stripper: that didn't work. Then we tried a blow-torch to burn it off. That worked OK on the flat bits. The sculptured panels needed a traditional method: chipping the paint off with a hammer and then using a round wire brush in an electric drill. It was back-breaking hard labour! And it must have annoyed the neighbours ... hours and hours of CHINK-CHINK-CHINK and CLANK-CLANK-CLANK.
When we got all the paint off, we could read the maker's name - Macfarlane & Co, Glasgow. This iron foundry was one of the most famous in the whole world.
Finally, by Monday, they were ready to be painted with two coats of a special thick paint called Hammerite and even that took two whole days.
Problem was that because they are as old as the house - 105 years - they have been painted many times in many colours over the years and now the paint was very thick and cracking up with rust showing through. Our plan was to get rid of all the loose cracked paint but, once we got started, it became clear that we had to get almost all of the paint layers off.
We tried caustic paint stripper: that didn't work. Then we tried a blow-torch to burn it off. That worked OK on the flat bits. The sculptured panels needed a traditional method: chipping the paint off with a hammer and then using a round wire brush in an electric drill. It was back-breaking hard labour! And it must have annoyed the neighbours ... hours and hours of CHINK-CHINK-CHINK and CLANK-CLANK-CLANK.
When we got all the paint off, we could read the maker's name - Macfarlane & Co, Glasgow. This iron foundry was one of the most famous in the whole world.
Finally, by Monday, they were ready to be painted with two coats of a special thick paint called Hammerite and even that took two whole days.
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