which_chick | (no subject)

Whee! I am sort of surprised at how many people want to tell me how they eat their oatmeal. Hooray for participating in the oatmeal not-a-poll! (And how many people eat the pre-flavored kind that comes in packets? I had no idea...) On a tangent, cooked barley makes a really nice breakfast cereal if you put butter and sugar and milk on it just as if it were oatmeal. Seriously. (I'm a big barley fan.)

Today at work, I learned how to remove at least four coats of paint and one coat of contact cement (like for carpet) from wooden stair treads.

Use a propane torch and a skinny putty knife. Seriously, this works. Turn the torch on and wave the flame-y part of propane torch over a smallish area of unwanted surface coating until it blisters and gets lightly charred-looking. Remove the torch and quickly make with the scrape-y motions. You have to work while the unwanted coating is hot and you will do fairly well if you heat-n-scrape about a 2" square area at a time. When you stop making easy progress with the putty knife, it's time to reheat the coating with the torch.

You'll probably be as amazed as I was to discover that it's not particularly easy to set wood on fire with a propane torch. I mean, yeah, you can do it, but not by accident. You'd have to hold the torch in one spot for quite a while and then be bloody oblivious to, y'know, the flames and smoke and stuff.

Do not breathe the fumes of charring paint. Do not touch self with propane torch flame, as it is quite hot. Do not eat charred, scraped paint. Keep work area clear of scraped paint and glue as it is more flammable than the wood and will catch on fire if you wave the torch over it.