More Scraping

I spent yesterday scraping and stripping paint off the cedar shingles on the dining room bay window. Not only does the paint have to be removed from the face of the shingle but also the bottom edge.

Here is a photo of a shingle edge before scraping.And here is a photo after the edge was scraped.
The paint removing is going slow because I also need to remove paint from in between the shingles. Over the years paint has built up between the shingles causing the shingles to bow when they expand due to humidity. Sometimes the shingles do not lay back down flat after the humidity goes away because they get caught on old paint.

It appears that the last several coats of paint were painted without much prep work being done. New paint was laid over chipped and peeling paint, over dirt, and even over partially missing shingles.

R removed the trim piece from around the top of the dining room bay window. The small piece closest to the face of the house was missing and the adjacent piece was rotted on the end. I am hoping to find the same trim piece at Home Depot. If I do I will only need to buy 4 feet. If I cannot locate the exact same trim I will need to buy 14 feet of something similar. Either way the trim needed to come off so I could strip the paint. The weather forecast said rain today. The sky is cloudless. So I guess it is time to mow again.

Stripping paint...oh so much fun...

On Sunday, I started stripping the paint around the exterior of the windows. I am using a heat gun and as long as the wind stays below gale force and the air temp is above 55 degrees, I can make pretty good time.

So far I have stripped 3 complete windows and 3 additional bottom sashes. I have, so far,only found one damaged/rotted part. It is in the middle of the bottom rail and is 1 inch by 3 inches and about 1/2 inch deep. Should be a fairly easy patch, I hope.

I am amazed at the thickness of the paint is some areas. Overall I'd say the paint is 1/16th of an inch with areas as thick as 1/8th of an inch. The original shingle color, as well as the trim color appears to be a medium to light grey. We will be painting a darker grey with white trim.

The original roof was cedar shakes painted a dark emerald green. When I stripped the front door (40" v groove 2 1/2" thick), I found it to have been painted white, tan, turquoise, red, and dark green. The body of the house, as best as I can tell, was originally grey, then white, tan, white, and light yellow. It also appears that they painted the trim more often than the body of the house.


Here are the windows before I started paint removal using a heat gun.





Here are the windows, 2 1/2 hrs later.

Approximately 5 hours of scraping to finish this set of windows. Hopefully, on Sunday, they will be sanded and primed....weather permitting.

Here is a photo of the first flowers to bloom in my yard this spring.

They are very tiny. For reference, those stones are the size of quarters, nickels, and dimes. But they are still purdy!!!!!!! Real purdy!!!!

Here they are 2 days later. Even more purdy.