Love Gun

The wood trim in our house has about 10 layers if paint on it in every hue imaginable. This is not a happy fact. I can't understand why someone would add yet another layer of paint to woodwork and mouldings that are already so thick with glopped-on paint you can barely see the details of the wood itself. Some people even go so far as to paint over hinges and window locks - this is utter insanity and is the lazy man or woman's way of doing things. Of course, this too is one of the abuses our house was subjected to before we moved in and rescued it. But let's face it: there comes a time when decades of old paint has to be removed. So, any room makeover we tackle entails taking off all door and window hardware, stripping it and reusing it (they just don't make door hinges the way they used to so we try to salvage the originals, 10 layers of paint or not). If we wanted to take the easy way out and do a crap job the woodwork in our house could just be sanded before painting, but we decided that we wanted to get down to the bare wood and start fresh.

Thankfully I discovered an indispensable product that I can not live without. I call it my Love Gun. I kid, it's really called a heat gun. It has changed my life.




It kind of looks like a blow dryer but do not get this thing near your hair - or your skin or anything plastic. This thing gets fiery HOT! It will singe, burn or melt just about everything. So when I use my heat gun I also make sure this is nearby:



Better safe than sorry! And since I was working today with the Love Gun I thought it only appropriate to listen to this:


We are currently re-vamping our home office. The first thing I do when I take on a room is to strip all the baseboards, moulding, windows and doors of the offensive layers of paint. This is not an easy task since this room has 4 double-hung windows and 2 doors, and all that moulding, and all those baseboards. This is not the cheap ugly new crap that you find in newly built houses but rather is old and original to the house, so in keeping with our aesthetic, it must be kept. So, out came my toy, the heat gun.

Here is a shot showing how damn hot this thing gets, and how it bubbles up the many layers of old paint:


Here are a couple of shots of me scraping away the paint. It comes off pretty easily, but keep on the lookout for smoke and sparks! Seriously, I could start a fire if I don't keep my eyeballs peeled.





















This is actually a pretty labor intensive good upper body workout, but it is much easier than sanding! And you will get down to the lovely bare wood.

By the way, the song "Plaster Caster" is pretty hilarious. It's a fact that none of the guys in KISS ever got cast by the famous Plaster Caster herself, Cynthia. They wanted to but she said no dice. She apparently thought they were jerks...imagine that!

And here is an art shot of the door trim that I finished today. Looks nice. Bare wood!





When all the woodwork is stripped I will paint the walls (still planning on going with the goth dark gray Valspar color called "Sled"), and will then prime and paint the mouldings/windows/baseboards/etc with Valspar "Ultra White" high gloss. All the trim in the rooms we have already re-vamped are this color. We figured that since we have gone to all the trouble of removing the million layers of paint we do not want to repeat this exercise in hard labor! So, we will keep it all white, forever, and will only have to touch up the paint periodically. No more pesky layers!

"Plaster Caster (plaster caster)
Grab a hold of me faster (faster faster)
She calls me by the name of Master"....hilarious!



we are punk rock martha stewart