A Bad Case of Measles

As they say in the painting business, "that looks like crap."

Good painters know that painting is really only 10% painting. The other 90% is preparation. Washing, sanding, scraping, patching, and filling holes take up way more time than spreading the paint. This job has been no exception. The scaffolding alone took two days to set up before the painters could even start. And it's been noisy around here ever since.

First came the power-washing. For two days, the painters had two gas-powered power washers going full time, hosing down the house. First it just washed off the dirt, but later it started peeling away the loose paint. And there was plenty of loose paint. They work in teams: one guy aims the power washer at the house while another guy runs around inside the house with an armload of towels, ready to soak up any water that leaks in. Smart move: old houses leak pretty fiercely when you hit them with 4500-psi water nozzles. It can do more than strip paint; it can take off fingers.

Next came the lead-abatement program. Old paint usually contains lead, and none more so than old white paint. (Lead is the pigment that turns the paint white.) Our painting crew is lead-certified, meaning they know how not to poison themselves when removing lead paint. Part of the secret is to use a special lead-binding goop that they spread on like primer, then scrape off. The goop binds molecularly to the lead, rendering it harmless. It doesn't exactly turn lead into gold -- not for us, anyway -- but it sure costs like it does. Without it, the State of California would make us wrap the house in plastic, cover the soil to a distance of 10 feet, turn off the water, and dispose of all the paint flakes in a toxic-waste facility. And the workers would all have to wear hazmat suits. No, we'll go with the goop, thanks.

Phase 3 involves good old-fashioned scraping. Day after day, we had four guys with paint scrapers climbing on, over, and around the house scraping away loose paint. It sounds funny from the inside. Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. And you never know where they'll be, so the sound moves around unpredictably. It can be a little creepy if you let it get to you, like a bunch of small animals scratching to get in.

The final preparation involved sanding, both power sanders and just hand sanding. Again, the noise from inside was pretty strange and monotonous. Four buzzing power sanders on the outside walls for eight hours a day will drive you nuts. It must have been worse for them. Or maybe that's the effect of the lead.