Scraping Paint

today i got to do something i hadn't done since my days in Scotland (2000/2001/2002) when i helped to transform a hundred+ year old building into a coffeehouse/church in Glasgow.  being an artist...typically you can find me applying paint to things....but today i got to scrape paint off. 

i've been helping with a large mural project (details in the previous post) and part of that project has been to not only paint the walls and ceilings...but also all the doors. we ran into a bit of problem when we realized that the paint that was originally on all 12 doors was an oil based paint. the paint we are applying to do this project is a latex paint. this won't work. as you know, oil and water don't mix...so latex will just peel off once applied on top of the oil based paint. 

we tried sanding the doors...but didn't get very far. so a stripping solvent needed to be brushed on (it's purpose is to eat away at the paint and bubble it up to make it easier to scrape off). special gloves and masks were needed to protect us from the toxic fumes. then we set to scraping the paint off with scraping tools. it's a long, tedious, and muscle aching job. 

once the paint is completely scraped off we can apply a coat of primer that will allow us to use the latex paint we have to paint the murals with onto the doors (creating a continuous scene). 

so i had a bit of a nostalgic experience today...scraping paint, something i did A LOT of when i was in Scotland. you can read about my experiences in Glasgow at my blog: http://www.streetsofglasgow.blogspot.com