Bring on the heat!

And no, our heat is not on yet. For the first time over the weekend, I used our new heat gun to do some paint stripping. What a difference! I HIGHLY recommend it for anyone having to do some stripping. It works so much quicker and is cleaner than the the options (stripping and sanding).

We had a couple areas with original molding and at least 1/8th an inch of paint built up on it. In our bedroom, we just sanded, and did what prep we could, but now, a couple years later the paint is cracking and not looking that great. So, with the rest of the original stuff we thought we should strip everything off. Handling stripper in an area with new paint, new floors, etc. would have been quite dangerous. It was great to have an alternative. I just pointed the gun, and quickly stripped off all layers of paint in a matter of minutes. I also needed to use a respirator because the fumes are pretty strong. (would not recommend doing it around kids). After using the heat gun, I sanded very briefly to get off the excess varnish that was left on the wood.

And if you are thinking (as we thought for an instant) "oh, it looks so nice now that it is down to the wood-you should just stain it!" The wood is in bad shape. Someone took great care in stapling all over the place. (it would really just be easier to do a skim coat of wood filler). And heck, we have all that other painted molding now installed.

Now, for those radiators--we are close to heat, really we are. Reinstalling the radiators are just a bit more complicated because of the raised flooring, two pipes to connect, and a cut out radiator that needed to be repiped.

Radiator 1- the dressing room radiator, created its own havoc this weekend because it did not want to fit in with the new window sill that Glenn installed. So, Glenn needed to cut out some of the window molding, prime and paint it before he could install. (which he did! yeah!)


Radiator 2- Dining room. Well, the floor raising required Glenn to replace these pipes again. He originally cut this radiator out I think in 2003, and it had already been repiped, but he needed to repipe it again, which he did, and we got it intalled. Yeah!

Now, the weekend problem child: Radiator 3, the living room radiator. We were missing a part that is not carried at home depot (a 1 1/4 in. return el). I hopefully get to go pick that up today from the plumbing supply store. (woke up to hearing that there was a 3 alarm fire a few blocks away from the store with "noxious fumes")

There's a good chance that we'll have heat turned on tonight, but I'm sure we'll be much warmer by the weekend at the latest.

Oh, and I'm sure that next summer there will be other radiator projects-we'll just do our best to do them in June.