A Little Bit Crunchy...

So I went back to stripping the g-d door. This time I chose the Klezmatics to listen to (because I am, at heart, an angry Jew)…

I’d forgotten, from when I stripped the first half or so of this door (because it was, ahem, not exactly yesterday), that this paint comes off in strips – really, Tara, like a sunburn! And I didn’t even have to put it in the crockpot. Just put the heat gun on it (and find the proper tool to get it started) and shwoop – whole big sheets!

Like this:

Now, the reason it comes off in whole big sheets is also the reason those sheets have that pretty golden color on the back of them: there’s a layer of shellac on under there.

Which is nice, in that it does make the paint come mostly off in those big sheets. But annoying in that the not-mostly parts leave random spots like this:

That shmear like this:

when you try to scrape them off. Which is why it's a good thing I'm not trying to take this back down to wood.

I'm not. Right, Goody?

No, Prudence, just paint it...

Do you know what else? When I hit this door with 750 degrees of heat gun, I got a yummy smell like at the fair. Which means there’s either beetles in the fried dough, lead in the clam fritters, or pine sap in the cotton candy. Or else that's not shellac at all but candy-apple crap.

I’m thinking the beetle theory sounds most likely, it being the state fair and all.

And on that note, I’m calling it quits for the afternoon. Johnny just went to “play his numbers,” so I’m going to take my traditional day-off lunch break that I didn’t get earlier: a half a watermelon and an episode of “Big Love” on demand.

Hey, maybe tomorrow I’ll be an angry Mormon! Except I don’t think I own any Donny & Marie.

I sure as hell hope I don’t own any Donny & Marie…