mantle

Some family and friends have been asking for new pictures of the house since we have been doing so much work to it. I don't have any fabulous ones since nothing is really completed yet *sigh*. So here are the pictures from refinishing the mantle. I hope to have it stained and finished next week so that I can paint the brick (white).

This is the fire place and mantle before. Well kinda, I had already taken a little bit of paint off the front to see how easily it would come off. I forgot to take one before hand.

Me brushing on the first coat of the paint and varnish stripping chemical.

After waiting 30 minutes this is what the paint looks like...gross.



Ready to start scrapping the paint off.

A side view after the first coat was applied.

Matt scraping the paint off with a putty knife.

This is the result after 1 coat of stripper and some heavy scrubbing.

After coat number 1.

Underneath after coat 1, still super thick.

After coat number 1.

The top after coat 1, you can see why we decided to apply another coat of stripper.

Ok this is me applying the first coat, but I didn't get a pic so lets pretend this is me applying the second coat of stripper chemical.

The top after a second coat and a few more hours of scraping and scrubbing.

After coat number 2 and lots of elbow grease.

From the front after coat number 2, sorry no action shots.

My pretty new leather sectional attempting to escape the dust storm.

Me sanding, which lasted about 4 days total. Thank god for the invention of the electric belt sander.

Yeah I defiantly wasn't this chipper the whole time.

The calm after the storm.

My poor house, and my poor tv under there, everything was COVERED in brown dust.

Me after the sanding...that's a lot of dust.

Um yeah that's an inch of brown dust on the recliner...don't worry we are getting rid of it, normally I wouldn't allow my furniture to be "dusted".

My hair looked like this after each day of sanding, ew.

Finally here is the finished product, well kind of. I still have to stain and polyurathane, but here is the fully stripped and sanded mantle:







Annnnnd here are a few pictures of the massive clean up that took a full two days. These are just a few of the many many piles of dirt and dust that we swept up around the house:

Truely final pictures coming soon!