Painting The Fence
Hello everyone! ๐
April is coming to an end, and I'm trying to find some time to describe an activity I started last month with the idea of finishing it in a couple of days or a week at the latest, but it's been delayed until mid-April. The post about that is a bit longer, and there are more than enough photos, but I've been overwhelmed by this for over a month, so I'll take a breather now.
I was visiting my mother, and the weather was sunny outside. We were having coffee on the balcony. And she tells me, listen, what do you say we paint this balcony railing because it's almost wholly rusted?
Yes, it's true, I replied. It doesn't look like anything anymore, and it's high time we did something about it.
The best thing to do is to sand off the old paint and rust first and then repaint it. There are 12 meters of fence, but that's not so much.
Plan: one day for sanding, one day for primer or protective coat, and then another day or two for painting.
After all, the last time it was painted was forty years ago. And who repainted it? Me, of course :)
OK, I'd buy sandpaper on Friday after work and then sand for another hour or so.
Well, that was my first mistake. After two hours of sanding on Friday, I expected to sand at least one meter of the fence, but it didn't make any difference. It's as if I'm scratching the iron with a toothbrush...
What now? It won't work like this. I have to find something more robust โsome iron grinding head that you put on an electric drillโbut not until Saturday morning. All right, then. Let me try that.
Still optimistic, I'll go to the shop on Saturday morning and buy two grinding heads: one thicker for flat surfaces and one thinner for the rest.
And I start sanding the rust. I sand, I sand, I look to see if the rust has been cleaned off, and it's almost nothing.
Two hours of grinding passed, and I progressed twenty centimeters along the fence.
I now realize that my original plan had not been a stroke of genius and would all come apart. It took me 12 hours to sand forty centimeters of the fence, a visible part of the day, and I destroyed both iron sanding heads.
And that's a disaster! If I continue at this rate, I'll need more than 20 days to sand.
It rained on Sunday and Monday, so I couldn't do anything, but April arrived at the door with sunny weather.
Let's move forward!
I went to the shop again and bought six more iron grinding heads. I sanded every afternoon after work and made plodding progress...
Then it rained again. Somehow, towards the end of the second week, I reached the end of the grinding.
Finally! After two weeks.
I was an idiot; I imagined it would be a couple of days before the fence was repainted. That's what it's like when you don't know what you're doing.
The next stage is to apply a protective coat, or as we call it, a primer coat. There are also so-called two or three-component paints where no protection is needed. Still, the seller convinced me that it would be much better if each layer were separate to be more durable afterward.
After three days, I managed to paint the fence with primer.
And now the final!
I bought two kilos of paint, I thought it would be enough, but it wasn't.
It's metallic brown, like old bronze, and reflects differently in different lights.
I like it.
I ran out of paint and had to order more because the shop didn't have it. I waited a week, but that's OK. In the meantime, my wife and I worked in the field and planted potatoes.
It took me three days to finish painting. Yes, I have to admit that I got better and faster. ๐
It's done now, thank God :)
It will last at least ten years without rusting (I hope). The cost of the paint and everything else was โฌ250. My time and labor didn't even count.
I would have chosen something else if I had known it would take so long.
For example, an inox (stainless steel) or PVC fence.
The cost would certainly have been higher, around โฌ1000 here, but a team would have come and put up a new fence in a couple of days...
But I'm satisfied because it looks good, well, at least to me.
That was a long story; thank you for your attention.
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Great job! Amazing how much work is involved to sand down the fence, but the job looks beautiful in the end.
Thank you. Believe it or not, I was first looking for someone who could do it, but I couldn't find him. Nobody wanted to do it; they already knew what it was. You spend a lot of time and energy. But you're right. I like it, especially because it reflects differently depending on the sun and the time of day. Sometimes, it's brown, and sometimes, it's grey or blue. Interesting.
One thing I must salute you for is that you had to sand off the old paint before you put the new one on it. You did a great job
Kudos!
I've been burdened with this all month. ๐
Wow. Wow. Wow! You did it great and your Mom can be proud to have such a good boy.
Its a very nice house and now looks like new
!DHEDGE
Thank you. But I could have done it earlier, not before retirement. ๐
Yes but you learned a lot for the next time ๐๐
Yes, I'm now Master Fence Painter ๐
Sanding. Hate doing that! So donโt envy you for doing so. It looks utterly fantastic now though. A good job done well.
Thank you. I hope nothing will need fixing for at least a decade. ๐
A lot of effort, it looks really great now, congrats!!! If I ever buy a fence, I will choose one with clean lines ๐
Me too, but this fence was made by my dad when he had a few artistic fits...
Someone here has got nerves of steel after all! All my respect... ๐ฎ
Now you're not only the hero of the family, you're probably in the running for mayor, or at least for your district ๐.
Do you have any idea what my plan of action would have been? Dismantled the railings - sandblasted them - sprayed them with a compressor. But you've got nerves of steel ...
I have a compressor, but if I painted with it I'd make a whole pigsty on my balcony...
Kaj sem rekel? Najprej ga razstavite in ลกele nato delajte na njem...
To je smiselno, ampak ta moja ograja je zaลกvasana, ni je mogoฤe razstaviti, najlaลพje bi bilo da bi jo odpilil in postavil drugo..