I figure the local kids consider me to be an old guy. Maybe not a geezer (and maybe, since I ride a sport-bike, not too pathetic), but definitely climbing the hill if not yet over it. Nevertheless, I don’t think I fit the description of an “old timer.”

To qualify for that title, you need to live in a town longer than most everybody else. I live in a place that had a 90-year-old mayor, so my two decades here don’t cut it. Elmer, who wears suspenders and runs a tire shop/pool supply store down the road, would agree he’s an old timer. If I were to walk into his shop and call him that, he wouldn’t take offense (although he’d probably have some smart-ass rebuttal, and nobody can slap you down like a witty old-timer.)

Maybe I’m getting old, but I can’t remember  which local old-timer told me how – back in the day – they regularly used open flame to strip paint from the exterior of houses and barns. For all I know, it could have been Elmer.

It’s a method that’s dangerous as hell because sparks and flames can easily ignite the stuff stuck up underneath clapboards. Even electric tools can do that, especially heat guns that blow heated and sometimes flaming bits of paint into those tinderbox crevices.

Stripped With Flame, Slathered With Beige

So I tend to leave open flames to the old-timers, the fellows who know how to re-build a house, should they accidentally burn it down, and can do it between fertilizing the back 40, installing a new transmission in the pickup and catching a few 11-pound bass with homemade lures.

However … yesterday, on a whim, I grabbed my MAPP torch, squeezed the trigger and pointed the 5,300-degree flame at the door to the attic which I’d been stripping (outside) with my heat-plate.  The nasty old paint nearly flew off the surface and, by keeping the flame moving, I never left a burn mark. Now that’s cookin’ with gas.

Already pleased with the time I’d saved, I found yet another reason to smile: I decided to paint the hidden (attic) side of the door with the same beige paint from the Lowe’s bargain bin that now graces my oil tank and served as food for my twisted blogger brain just the other day.

The sun was out and I was inspired to write a poem about the joys of discovering ways to make use of cheap beige paint. It seemed that God was willing me to tackle this creative endeavor, but finding words to properly rhyme with “beige” proved impossible.

A Ladder Jack

I was a full-time news reporter in September 1999 when Hurricane Floyd paid a visit to New Jersey. As such, I was expected to be ready to hop in my vehicle, during the most deadly phase of the  wind and rain, to capture the story for our readers.

The fact that Hurricane Floyd turned out to be little beyond a lot of rain out here in West Jersey might be the reason I don’t remember it. However, I DO remember making an unauthorized Floyd-related departure from the news bureau right before the storm arrived. I left, without securing the bureau chief’s approval, because I was worried about my ladders.

In 1999, my home renovation attention was focused on the house’s expansive northeast wall. I’d erected a RubeGoldberg combination of extension ladders, planks suspended by ropes, ladder jacks and pump jacks. I used the ropes to lift the planks off the ladder jacks so that I could raise or lower the jacks.

It's a long hike to that northeast roofline apex

It was quite an operation, one that included the use of a super-long extension ladder (possibly a 40-footer) that enabled me to strip and paint the tippy-top peak of the house.

As I sat in the bureau, listening to warnings of hurricane force wind approaching the area, I grew increasingly nervous. The northeast side of the house happens to be the side that includes the main electrical service. I cringed at the thought of strong winds whipping around the house, grabbing my ladders and flinging them into the power line.

I also cringed at the thought of toppling planks and jacks smashing the windows or flying into the neighbor’s nearby house.

So as the sky darkened, I raced home in my Ford Aerostar. For all the newspaper knew, I was at the local supermarkets interviewing panic-stricken housewives as they stocked-up on milk (because we all know dairy cows stop providing milk during a hurricane). Instead of taking notes at ShopRite, I was outside my house, running up and down ladders,  tying them down with any and all pieces of rope I could find.

It got windy, but not one ladder moved that day.

However, there came an evening – about six years later – when I left a ladder standing on the ( by then fully painted) northeast wall and never tied it down. As day turned to night, a summer  thunderstorm ripped through town. The unsecured ladder didn’t stand a chance. Neither did the storm window it smashed. Neither did the big, thick metal lightning rod it took out. And I wasn’t thrilled about the scrape marks left in siding as the ladder made its destruction-filled descent.

I’m grateful the toppling ladder didn’t strike the electrical line. That would have been cute. Maybe it just proves that, when bad things happen in life,  it’s often because somebody didn’t tie down their ladder. So to speak.

I admit it. There’s something wrong with me: I’m way too sentimental for my own good. Sentimentality is fine and might be endearing, but only up to a point. If a man gets misty-eyed when he looks at old pump jack equipment, it’s safe to say he’s running a quart below the dipstick.

The Poor Man's Scaffolding

I explored this personality flaw today while visiting a small, unheated room off of the basement, a room that came to be known as “Sam’s Room.” The area is stuffed with stuff, including six pump jacks and 12 pump jack pole supports.

Sam was a stray Alaskan Malamute we took in. He was sweet but had a propensity to pee indoors. Sam was big and so were his urinations (is that even a word?). So when he decided to water a Christmas tree, Sam was relegated to the room that now bears his name.

Anyway, Sam’s long gone and so are the days of me using multiple pump-jacks to scale the sides of the house for exterior paint restoration. But when I spotted the pile of old pump jacks this morning, I had to  furrow my brow, bite my lower lip and shed a tear.

OK, I didn’t really shed a tear. I actually reminded myself that I should put the things up for sale on Craigslist.

Nevertheless, I do have fond memories of my adventures on those shaky pump jack-supported planks. I’m not a particularly brave guy, but I showed some real bravura at times, especially when the jacks lost their grip on the homemade 4-by-4 wooden poles and dropped the plank a few inches before successfully grabbing the wood.

Pump Jacks in Their Glory Days

It’s been several years since I last used the poles and the jacks. Some of the poles, which were just staggered 2-by-4s nailed together, remain intact. They’re shoved beneath the Post Office. Others were cut up for firewood. They, and the jacks, did a wonderful job allowing me to work in long, horizontal sections, moving  slowly, on wobbly 12-inch-wide planks, down big chunks of clapboard.

So, here’s a shout-out to my old helpers: Hey there, pump jacks. Love you guys.

Removing the old paint off the entire exterior of the house was onerous, but  it wasn’t the most obnoxious part of the outdoors renovation. That dubious honor, at least from the perspective of the neighbors, goes to the sanding phase.

I hate sanding. Some people hate disco. Some hate Rush Limbaugh. I hate sanding. And I don’t just hate sanding wood. I also hate sanding plaster. On too many occasions, I’ve taken the time to mix plaster patch, spread it into the cracks in the walls and ceilings, let it dry and then shy away from finishing the job because it entailed sanding.

Somebody Sand Me

So, if I’m repelled by sanding small plaster cracks, imagine my panic at sanding the entire exterior of a house. But there’s one thing that will make a guy come to terms with doing something he hates: A loud, dangerous power tool. As described here, I modified a docile Porter-Cable paint remover and turned it into a Sanding Beast that not only tore away all the nasty old wood that needed to be removed but also made me feel like a Manly Man while using it.

One slip of concentration and this sucker would have ripped a gouge in at least one of my body parts. I’d be deaf today had I not worn earplugs. It made so much sawdust that I not only wore a dust mask but I also donned a full-face motorcycle helmet so I could see what I was doing. That must have been food for derision by any onlookers: A crazy person wearing a sportbike helmet while he wrestled with a man-eating rotary sander as he was trying to balance himself on a 12-inch-wide plank suspended 20 feet in the air on wobbly pump-jack poles.

On one (OK, maybe more than one) occasion, the spinning 16-gauge disk did slip a bit and touched, for a split second, the power cable. Sparks flew as the insulation was shredded. Amazingly, I maintained my balance way up there on the teetering plank, despite the rush of fear-induced adrenaline. But I remember being annoyed that I then had to climb down to splice the severed wire and tape it up.

I’m sure the neighbors appreciated the brief period when quiet returned to the village.

I wasted most of yesterday morning trying to cut wood with a dull chainsaw. Correction: I spent most of yesterday morning trying to sharpen a dull chainsaw so that I could cut wood with a sharp chainsaw. I ended up with neither a sharp chainsaw or firewood, just a lost morning.

Sharpening a chainsaw is NOT like riding a bicycle. It’s something you can learn to do fairly well if you are really diligent and patient or have access to certain prescription-only pills. However, unlike riding a bicycle, sharpening a chainsaw is a skill that will abandon you if you ignore it. Use it or lose it, I guess.

Maybe I should just speak for myself on that, but somehow I know I’m not the only one. In fact, my buddy Mark told me  he finds chainsaw sharpening to be too much trouble. I think he used the word “impossible.” So he pays a guy $5 to do it. I know Mark is intellectually capable, dexterous and mechanically inclined. He regularly takes things apart and fixes them. Nevertheless, he pays somebody to do the chainsaw. That says something.

I’ve gone that route. I paid Elmer to sharpen my chains. Elmer’s good at  selling tires and pool supplies. Don’t tell him I said so, but he’s not so hot at sharpening chainsaws.

That’s because sharpening chainsaws, frankly, sucks.

I knew I dulled mine about two years ago when I had to use it to cut away at some rotted sill wood. I struck a bit of the stone foundation and my heart sank. I didn’t need the saw to cut any trees or firewood in the intervening years, but I never forgot that I’d dulled the cutters. I knew the day of reckoning would someday arrive. For two years, every time I walked near the saw I’d be hit with a sickening dread.

So yesterday I tried to recapture my chain sharpening mojo. I used the sharpening guide. I used the  proper file. When I was finished the cutters looked nice and shiny. I lugged the orange monster into the woods, took a deep breath and pulled the starter. Within a half-second of placing the saw on the log, I knew I was doomed.

I tried again. File in one hand, (expletive deleted) chainsaw in the other. Push, push, push with the file. Next one. Push, push, push. Fire up the saw, approach the log … Strike two.

I returned home in a bad mood and with no wood. But I’m not giving up. I’ve been through this before. I’m going to keep getting back on the bicycle, back on the bicycle, back on the bicycle.

My childhood friend Gary sent me a link to a story about a 25-year-old college student who restored an old Victorian house in the town of Red Lion, Pa. It was a nice story. The fellow seems ambitious and, more importantly, enthused about fixing-up historic (or, at least, long-in-the-tooth) houses.

Since my pseudo-specialty is paint-removal, I had to wonder about the second paragraph’s second sentence. “He spent nearly 200 hours removing seven or eight layers of paint from a wooden handrail around the top of the stairs.” That must be the longest handrail on Earth. Either that or the guy was using some very weak, off-the-shelf paint stripper.

Peel Away 7 Not Doing Much

Earth, and Paint, Friendly

I recently wasted about $30 on a small bucket of Peel Away 7 to use on some interior door frames. I believed the advertising hype about how great the stuff was despite being environmentally friendly. (That last part should have prepared me for disappointment because most things safe for Earth have absolutely no impact on this house’s paint.)

I let the Peel Away 7 sit for about 24 hours and scraped it off.  In fact, the goop was all I scraped off. The wimpy stuff didn’t touch the paint.

So … I too could spend 200 hours or more trying to strip my door frames with Mr. Nice Guy concoctions. I’d rather throw on a respirator, plug-in my heat plate and heat gun, grab some sharp, flat implements of melted paint removal and get it the hell over with.

Late December of 2009 brought to New Jersey a nasty period of cold weather. Daytime temperatures rarely reached the 30s and a steady wind usually made outdoor activity even more bone-chilling. Of course, that’s when I got the bug to begin fixing the wooden, “diamond over X” porch column decorations.

So there I was, on a teetering step-ladder in 20-degree weather, wielding a reciprocating saw. Although the decorations were screwed into the porch columns, there was no way those rusty fasteners were going to cooperate and come out without a fight. Hence the saw, fitted with a metal-cutting blade.

It zipped through the screws, separating the legs of the decorations from the columns. At first, anyway. Within minutes, as my fingers solidified into icy stubs, apparently unaware that the cheap cotton gloves I wore were  supposed to keep them warm, the saw turned into a greased pig.

I was out there balancing myself on the too-short ladder, using one hand to hold the saw and the other to hold the pieces of woodwork as they became untethered. This was a recipe for trouble even when I was freeing the pieces that were at eye level.  When I tried removing those that were above my head, I entered the Red Zone of Stupidity.

You really need two hands to hold a violently reciprocating saw, especially when fingers are hardening. The blade got stuck in a particularly intact screw, the saw escaped my feeble grip and fell to the porch, snapping off the blade, I yelled a number of words that temporarily destroyed the wonderful Christmas spirit of the neighborhood. At least the descending power tool didn’t hit me in the head on the way down.

There are 40 of these decorations. Actually there were 40 of  them. Some rotted beyond repair. Some were damaged beyond repair. There are now about 3o that are intact or salvageable.

I’m using Durham Rock Hard Water Putty to fix some of them, but I’m going to have to build from scratch the rest.

This photo shows, on the left, the tattered remains of one of these fellows.

On the right is one I restored a few weeks back.

Today would be a good day to get back to that time-consuming project. Perhaps tomorrow.

Almost a year ago, when I finally began stripping the thick, old paint off of the hallway doorframes, I paid a visit to a local hardware store in search of some dental tools. Yes, dental tools. Those pain-inducing, ultra-sharp, silver devices of torture used by dental hygenists and – with even more sadistic gusto – strong-armed dentists.

Nothing does a better job than a dental tool when it comes to getting in the nooks and crannies during melted paint removal.

The local hardware store is old-school and that’s why I love it. You can barely fit into its tiny aisles due to all the stuff. Man, do they ever have stuff!

I had no doubt they’d have dental tools, and they did. But they also had this other silver device for which I have no name. I am tempted to call it Mr. Perfect because it’s perfect for the job at hand.

The one end is flat and rectangular. The other is flat and spade-shaped. Words cannot convey how wonderful it feels to get that little spade into a door-frame corner, with paint softened by heat-gun-blasted hot air, and have it breezily scoop out every last molecule.

Thank you local hardware store.

Thank you Mr. Perfect.

So God created the universe. Yawn. I’m more impressed with Warner Manufacturing Co. which created the #382 Electric Paint Remover, a 1,000-watt heating element on a handle.

A 6.5″ x 3.5″ metal box surrounds all but the business side. With one hand, you slap the sucker onto the surface and wait a few seconds for the paint to melt. With the other, you wield a wide scraper. Keep it moving. Wear a respirator. Heavenly.