Sand Blasting

Yesterday we had a full day of work at Gabriel Property Management. The old Studebaker mansion is getting old and everything is in dire needed of another paint job. Gabriel, which manages all the People of Praise properties, rented a sandblaster for a day that quickly turned into a day and an half and then two days.

As it turns out sand blasting is really difficult, and painful. I wasn't paying attention as I was jumpiung to the next ladder ( we set up ledders on after the other to keep us working rather than having to come down) and the blaster swiped across my arm - its a nice battle wound (Mom don't worry I can barely even see it now).

The sand blaster has a huge Ford engine that runs a air compressor, this then mixes the sand and air and 20 foot hose delivers the mixture to the wall we were blasting. The molding/gutters a long one of the sides of the house was flaking off and we needed to get if off to repaint it - painting actually involves very little painting - prep work is everything. So the sand blaster saved us days of sanding the molding down by hand.

It was like reverse spray painting. The paint came off like an aresol can puts paint on. Well, at least that was how it worked for the paint that was still pretty well preserved. Later we moved to the side that is directly hit by the sun and looked like it hadn't seen a new paint job in about 10 years. The paint was flaking off in sheets, but it actually took longer to blast that. The paint acted like a shield and the sand just deflected off it rather than penetrating and removing it.

We had been using silica at the beginning but opted out once we relized how cancerous it is. In its place we used play sand. Which was interested. The silica just formed into dust while the play sand rained down like snow. It was like a warm christmas at the top of the latter and surroundings. Everything was covered in sand by the time we were done. Monday our job will be to finish the job with 5-in-1's and elbow grease.