This summer, I started working on the east side of the house, away from the street (and the neighbors). I figured if I screwed up in back, fewer people would see my shoddy work.
It was finally July by the time I set out to work on the outside of the house (much delayed, due other projects like the patio and a bathroom wallpaper removal project that went on FOREVER.).
There was a lot of scraping. In the course of this project, I somehow acquired seemingly one of every scraper known to mankind. See exhibit 1:
Exhibit 1: Mr. H shows the collection of scrapers he carried in his tool belt during this stage of the project.
By far, the most useful scraper was the Bahco 625. It's a carbide scraper with an interchangeable blade. It worked great for peeling away paint. See below:
Below shows the results of cutting out old caulk and removing flaking and peeling paint. This window (and the one below it) were the first to get the full preparatory treatment. Scraping paint. Removing caulk. Treating wood. I used a "7-in-one" painters tool (the kind with a so-called caulk cutting knife) to gouge out the old caulk. An exercise in frustration for these windows. The caulk was very dry and very old. It took me about 45 minutes on the first window just to cut out the caulk!
After being frustrated with the slow process of removing the caulk using manual methods, I sought out a powered option. I was in luck! Bosch offered a caulk removal knife:
We didn't have in the tool library the driver for this accessory: a multi-purpose oscillating tool. I had familiarity with oscillating tools, having an inexpensive Crafstman multi-tool (best used for sanding small jobs). I needed something with more power and durability: Enter the Bosch MX30E:
Menards had one of these tools on clearance, plus had the semi-regular 11% off sale. Score! I picked one up (and the caulk knife), and tried it out. Using that magic combination, I cut my caulk removal time down to 10 to 15 minutes per window. Score! Considering at that time, there were 8 more windows to go (plus a ton of sanding), it was a great purchase!
The window preparation was a lot of work. In a future post, I'll answer the question "So, you got rid of the flaking paint, what's next?"
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