Now Playing: "Herbie Rides Again" - Dearest Son's DVD rental. Again.
Current Mood : Dazed and Confused (and a bit high on paint thinner)
Visitors to the main site may have noticed that something new has been added. Yup - a new page ! Might as well use up the space I have while waiting for my order for more to go through. Perhaps spurred on by yesterday, or just plain getting sick of intentions going nowhere, I packed up the Bright Pink Castle and the can of Fusion spray paint I bought Monday and took ‘em down to Beloved Hubby's workshop. He'd cleared a workspace for me inside, so I wouldn't have to use the windy backyard and the outdoor table. Waiting for me was a mostly empty jug of mineral spirits - paint thinner - that he said I'd need.
First order of business was to get all those *&^% cutesy stickers removed. I'll have a much easier time painting if I don't have to spray around and block off doves, bunnies, chipmunks, and puppies that I don't want anyway. I also removed the prop stickers - I hated those when I was a kid, too - as I'd rather have the shelves fulla stuff my dolls can touch. Took down the portrait over the fireplace and the mirror ‘reflection' - I'd rather have non-specific doll stuff there, and a real mirror. Even went after flowers, as those decals will be replaced by more dimensional stuff later.
At first, I started with scraping ‘em off with a razor blade. I figured any nicks would add character to the walls. But after several jumping skitters, it soon got too difficult to position everything I wanted to keep behind the blade. Beloved was right - the Fusion can said unweathered surfaces would need a wipedown with paint thinner - so I wondered. Would that help get these darn decals off ?
Oh, yeah ! A short soak, and those suckers almost came up by themselves. If you end up tackling a project like this, Goo Gone easily peels up stickers and their residue. But it's a lot more expensive than paint thinner. Beloved pays about $8. a gallon for thinner, and that'd barely get you a quart of Goo Gone. I put the razor away and peeled up about three dozen decals, wondering idly if NASA uses the same stuff to attach heat tiles to the Shuttles. I kept the fireplace ‘flames' sticker, the cat in front of the flames, and the face to a mantle clock, but all the other stickers were gone. Alleluia !
Unfortunately, now the damage was visible. Plastic that was colored differently behind the stickers, just plain discoloration for no reason elsewhere, and all-over dirty. Structurally, it's still quite good, but if I ever wanted to play with it, I *had* to paint it now. Even clean, it looks bad. Beloved said there's no way he'd attempt to paint it - too many nooks and crannies, too much texturing. So watch me go where pros fear to tread ! I noted how things were put together, figured out how to remove some parts, and gave it a solid cleaning and wipedown. And that was about all I could manage. I need a primer coat before I put the textured paint on, so I have to go shopping before I lay anything on it.
And it's all documented on the ‘This Old Palace' page. Hopefully I can do a bit of paint shopping tomorrow, and keep going, but I'm already pretty nervous. It is a much bigger project than I thought. Still, I don't have much to lose - if I totally butch it, I'm sure Dearest Son would take it off my hands, or I could donate it. At least I will have done something with it besides move it from place to place and stuff it in a closet. And who knows, I may actually do a good job at it, or maybe show how *not* to do this !
