June 07, 2004
The Basement Chronicles, Part IV
filed under: Demolishments and Renewvations[EDITOR'S NOTE - THIS ENTRY WAS TEMPORARILY CORRUPTED BY COMMENT SPAM. IT WILL BE RESTORED SOON.]
Anyway, they took my old wussy grinder back without noticing that I had ground away a good bit of the working part of it, and they accepted my extra $30 for the big butch grinder. And I set about finishing the grinding of the wall.
Let me just say: if you need a grinder, spring for the 7.5 amp. The difference between the big metal 7.5 and the wussy plastic 5 amp was like the difference between a Ginsu and a plastic butter knife. Much grinding, much dust, much faster. Whee!
So now the wall had nice clean empty lines between the bricks, but was caked in brick dust. A round of sweeping and then a round of vacuuming cleared the dust, and then a good scrubbing with muriatic acid got rid of the accumulated grime.
Okay, well that's startling - I just went to look up muriatic acid to find a fun link, and discovered that it has another, better known name: HYDROCHLORIC ACID. You know, the stuff that does this to people:
See, now in retrospect I'm terrified. (Okay, yeah, no that's not a real picture. It's a dummy. But still).
I did discover that when you pour muriatic/hydrochloric acid into a measuring cup, it smokes - just like a mad scientist! Fun with dangerous chemicals.
Anyway, after its acid bath, the wall looked like the part on the right rather than the dingy dusty part on the left:
So I'm looking at the wall, and at the white paint, or plaster, or whatever, that's still all over the bricks. After all, these are old old bricks - probably over a hundred years old, if they're original to the building. And I'm thinking "I kind of like that. It gives it an old, antiqued, distressed kind of look."
And I'm also thinking "I don't like that. It makes it too busy, and next to our loud, patterned couch it may be a bit much."
So my two thoughts argue for a while and I stare at the wall. I call Home Depot to see if they rent sand blasters. They don't. I call Lowe's to see if they rent tools at all. They don't. But the woman on the phone informs me helpfully that they DO rent trucks. I inform her helpfully that a tool is different from a truck. We hang up, better informed.
I decide to go down to Lowe's anyway, and see what they have in the way of paint stripping agents. And this is where my day goes seriously awry.
I found the Strypeeze.
The fair people at Savogran, makers of Strypeeze, claim that their product will cling to all surfaces and remove paint from various things, including masonry.
They are foul, foul liars.
Here it is from their mouths:
America's #1 selling remover comes in a semi-paste formula that improves cling, making it ideal for vertical or rounded surfaces. Powerful cutting action penetrates deeper and strips away several layers of paint at a time without damaging wood, metal or masonry. It stays wet longer to improve cutting action. Surfaces can be cleaned using a scraper and the water wash-off method.
I say again: FOUL, FOUL LIARS.
I purchased the requisite five quarts of Strypeeze gel, and dutifully applied it to my wall. My whole wall. 120 square feet of newly cleaned brick.
(Note to self: in the future, how about you try a test patch, genius.)
I left the area, as the fumes were overpowering - the stuff is an ectoplasmic goo of acetone and toluene. I gave it the recommended 15 minutes, plus about 10 minutes for luck.
No luck. Scraping removed approximately 3% of the paint patches. Scrubbing with a wire brush turned about 10% of the paint into a grey-white tint for the goo, which then soaked into every pore of the brick.
I gave it another half hour, as the directions suggested you should give it more time "to act" if it didn't work at first.
Then I gave it another half hour.
Eventually, I realized that I had taken my lovely, painstakingly clean wall and covered it with $50 worth of toxic sludge for NO REASON WHATSOEVER. And that it all had to be scrubbed off, by hand, with several buckets of water, so that it could seep sullenly into my carpet and make me high for the next 36 hours.
Curse you, Savogran. Curse you and cursed Strypeeze.
On the upside, I had a slightly less bad time with Strypeeze than this guy did.
In our next episode - the techniques and tribulations of brick re-pointing.
Posted by rjt at June 7, 2004 01:03 PM