Well… I’ve started myself a project here at the old house on the hill. More accurately, I guess I should say “in front of the garage next to the old house on the hill.” I have decided to repaint our horse trailer.

It was ten years old when we bought it in 2010. It was in pretty decent shape back then but the years have taken a toll. Lots of rust and scaling paint around the lower edges. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that it’s an even bigger project than I thought it would be. And I had a pretty good idea before I started that it was going to be big.

I did a 1979 Ford van back in the early 90’s. Patched up the fender wells and rocker panels, sanded everything out pretty smooth and repainted the whole thing. Including custom stripes down the sides and “Desert Rain” band logo on the back doors. Forty cans of spray paint…

With a little help from a neighbor in Gower, Missouri, I also resurrected the top of an ’87 Chevy Celebrity that got rolled over into a ditch on a gravel road. A gallon of Bondo™ and twenty cans of spray paint on that one. Plus a new windshield.

Neither of those were car show quality but they were both serviceable and decent enough to never draw any negative attention.

This horse trailer… it’s way beyond cans of spray paint. It’s going to take hours of grinding, sanding, filling, sanding, priming, more sanding, and painting. And, if you haven’t priced automotive paint lately and need to jumpstart your heart and elevate your blood pressure, give your local supplier a call and check that out. Boy Howdy, they must be using platinum powder in this stuff!!!

We’ll see how it goes. Most automotive paint projects don’t involve using stepladders and such but, hey, a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do, right? It takes what it takes. Unlike the spirit and soul, perfection is not the goal here. Improvement and protection. Slowing down the process of the earth reclaiming the ore taken from it a few decades ago.

Much like the spirit and soul, though, it’s not so easy to find the slightly corroded spots, the places where moisture and iron comingled, hidden in tiny seams and small pockets. Eventually, they will blister up the paint in places where the expansion of scale and powder pushes the coating away and make themselves obvious.

I’m hoping this work will be in time to at least slow down the corrosion, if not eliminate it. Left alone, it will not be long before the damage progresses from cosmetic to structural. Sin and corruption have that effect. Eating away, the destructive bonding with the solid, increasing the damage and advancing the destruction.

It takes more than a couple of layers of paint and primer to fix this. It takes grinding down through the accumulation of rust and scale, sanding away the slight spots. Work your way down to good metal, then build from there. Kind of like what is required for the rejuvenation of the heart, the refreshing of the spirit, the rebuilding of a life.

Just painting over rust is like pretending you’ve been born again when it’s actually nothing more than trying to lay a couple of new habits on top of an old way of life. Going to church but still lurching about in the old ways of living between Sundays.