Just as a slight release from editing boredom I thought I’d
do a post about some of the things I’ve been up to over the last few weeks –
those things that don’t involve me tramping miles across the mountains. I
recently took away a metal table of Jean-Pierre’s to tidy up. It was painted
white but rusty. I started by wire brushing off the loose paint but soon
realised that the whole lot would have to come off.
Having got into table mode I turned my attention to an old kafenion table I’d retrieved from a dump many years ago (Caroline walking a few paces away from me and pretending she didn’t know me). After my first attempt at tidying it up it ended up under layers of brown wood stain. Then, after a couple of winters outside, that was peeling and all its parts were coming loose. This is not finished yet – lots of rubbing down is required along with another coat of white and a thick coat of varnish on top.
Down in a local hardware store I found some powerful paint
stripper and used that (some advice for the uninitiated: never wire brush while
the paint stripper is still active as it’s like getting the spatter from a chip
fryer over your arms and face). Still, even with the stripper it took a lot of
work to get the thing down to base metal.
Next the primer coats then the final coats of white paint,
which can be a bugger if you’re using a brush and not a spray can.
It had been suggested that I do this table because of what I
did with my gate. This two tone result was because I’d run low on green paint
and had a can of black I’d bought from Lidl a while back.
Having got into table mode I turned my attention to an old kafenion table I’d retrieved from a dump many years ago (Caroline walking a few paces away from me and pretending she didn’t know me). After my first attempt at tidying it up it ended up under layers of brown wood stain. Then, after a couple of winters outside, that was peeling and all its parts were coming loose. This is not finished yet – lots of rubbing down is required along with another coat of white and a thick coat of varnish on top.
Meanwhile I went to help out a friend (Hi Chris) cut down
masses of bamboo on his property and feed it into a shredder. This seemed a
shame when 10-foot lengths of bamboo would cost a small fortune in England if
you could obtain them at all, but here they are an annoying weed. After that
job I took away some bamboo for myself and am now using it to rebuild an
arbour-type arch affair I gave up on growing grapes over and am now training a
rosemary bush over.
So there you have it: I’ve been a busy bee. Now back to that
damned editing.