A Stiff Belt

This is how I spent my Sunday. How about you?

One of the problems we've been having with scraping the paint is knowing how much to scrape off. Some of it is bubbling away from the siding, some of it peels away from the bubbles if we keep picking at it, and some of it is stuck fast to the panels.

So we went to ask the guys at the paint stores, and, unluckily for us, they all said the same thing: If we can scrape it off, then it should be scraped off. Damn. I was sort of hoping for a more casual, "Awww, leave it alone" answer.

Back at the ranch I set to work with a scraper again and, after twenty minutes of picking at it and getting just about nowhere, I grabbed a belt sander, loaded it with a 50-grit belt that I bought at the hardware store while we were out asking stupid questions, and started grinding away.

The difference between trying to sand the paint off the house with a 50-grit and the 80-grit belt I used last time was awesome. 50-grit just tore the paint off. Tore into the siding if I leaned too hard on it, too. There's definitely an art to using it.

The head-to-toe coverage is supposed to protect me from inhaling the lead-based paint that is almost certainly under the latex. I feel okay so it must have worked at least a little bit.