This Lo Life

Allison came in after me and scraped all of the door trims down to their original paint. They looked incredible! Allison at work I started painting the door trim and discovered it took being meticulous to produce really good results. I started by cutting in around the edges, painting the faces on each side of the doorway before finishing on the center piece of trim that stops the door. I put together this method from a YouTube video called " How to paint a door frame or door jamb - (correct technique) ,"  and from Family Handyman  " Trim Painting Tips " . It took about four hours to complete each door frame. I think they turned out quite good. Before Before After After

This is a tedious job. This week, I've spent about 12 hrs preparing four door frames and four hallway cabinet frames for painting. Why does this take so long you ask? Because I had to scrape off layers upon layers of bad paint to get down to a stable surface to paint on. And then I had to sand down the surfaces so they'll be nice and smooth with it comes time to paint.  I probably went overkill on it but I did four different things to prep the surface. I scraped off a lot of the bad paint with a 2" carbide blade scraper and sanded with 60 grit sand paper and a medium and extra fine coarse sanding sponges. In addition, we've discovered we have a layer of lead paint. I was so discouraged at that news. But we got some help from Allison's dad who told us to take simple precautions against inhaling lead dust. I went with wet sanding to keep the lead dust down to a minimum, which worked very well.  I also learned not to work to hard on surfaces that are in...