If house painting were a legislative session, scraping would be the filibuster. You don’t ever get through; you just choose a place to quit. This observation was prompted by my most recent attempts to upgrade the exterior of our rental house. The east gable that covers the porch needed some attention, I thought. Specifically, there was a section of five or six square feet where paint was scaling off of the wooden siding. I figured an hour would take care of prepping and another hour would take care of the painting. With figuring like that, I should be in charge of federal procurement.

After four hours of delight Saturday morning, I was still not finished. Apparently, there is not a square inch of that gable that isn’t yielding one or more layers of paint. I removed, literally, several pounds of old white, collected on the plastic sheets below me. Each pass of the scraper dislodged more paint. Depending on wind direction at the moment, flakes and chips and strips and powder drifted down to the porch, the sidewalk, the lawn or the Dairy Queen a block away. It began to look like someone had poured a whole jug of Gunk B Gone through an old scoured up snow cloud.

After going over the same spot from each direction, it would look like all that could be removed had been removed. Then, I’d slide the putty knife across and here we’d go again; an entire strip would turn loose. The latex coat that had been put on before we bought the place in ’02 seemed particularly inclined to surrender its present territory.

I suspect that it had been applied without sufficient surface preparation. Many painters do no more surface prep than wipe with a dry cloth and some do even less. Dust, dirt and chalk do not a good foundation make for a new coat of paint. Pressure washing, preferably with something like a detergent included in the mix, followed by a good rinse is more effective. But, it doesn’t matter how much you wash, loose paint will not make a good base for fresh paint.

So, that’s why I spent my Saturday morning at 1202 South 23rd on a ladder. And why I’ll spend a few more hours there sometime in the relatively near future. I can’t help but wonder if the Lord ever looks at my heart, shakes his head as he pulls the putty knife out of his back pocket and sighs as he goes back to work. Unlike me, though, I don’t think he’ll ever just choose a place to quit. On any of us.

H. Arnett
9/24/09