Richard Arfsten

Page 6

Ways to Reduce the Cost

If you would like to reduce the cost of the job, you could help back-roll and I will pay you painter's wages. Or I can leave parts of the job for you to do on your own.

In the first barn here, the current owners inherited it from their parents. They had a new roof put on it and had a carpenter make repairs and add some new doors. They came together on holidays to do part of the renovation themselves. I sandblasted the milk house so they could paint it at their get togethers.

New Wood

New wood is the hardest to get paint to stick to. When you touch it, it almost feels like it has a wax coating. This is lignan. Think of it as hard sap. Wood is made up of little straws. When a board is originally cut and sanded at the mill it gets hot and the lignan fills the pores of the little straws. I want to sandblast the new wood to make little dents in it so the paint has something to grab onto.

Protecting Glass

The bottom two pictures show a way to deal with glass. Sandblasting will break glass so it has to be protected with something. Here I am using heavy cardboard and/or plywood.

Farm Painting by Richard Arfsten ways to reduce cost