Chateau Keyboard

Saturday, June 21: Painting success

So when Axel was up here the other week he spent two whole days painting one radiator - eight hours a day, nothing else but that. Our radiators are the old-fashioned but now trendy cast iron type with lots of wrinkly bits. It makes them very efficient transmitters of heat but bummers for painting.
I picked up a can of aerosol paint the other day and have a go at one radiator with it this afternoon. It does one and a bit coats on the dark blue radiator in the blue room - hmm. €8 and it looks like we'll need about three cans per radiator. There are 11 of them in the house. Blimey.
In desperation I haul out the paint spraying gun. I used it in our old house to spray sealant on the walls of my office in a bid to stop water coming through (unsuccessfully) and wasn't impressed by its power. I had to dilute everything down about 5:1 to get it to work, so I'm not hopeful about its abilities with gloss paint.
But, surprisingly, a 50-50 mix of gloss and white spirit goes through with no trouble and the radiator has a second coat in no time. And a very nice, shiny, glossy finish it is too. Good grief. Axel's going to be mad I told him it'd never work. Sorry.
Regis, our Swiss neighbour, calls round to invite me for coffee this morning. He's in residence for a few days and we chat about how he's getting on back home. He's a teacher in Lausanne - he teaches liberal studies to apprentices there - and what he got up to during the G8 meeting and consequent demonstrations there. Nice to meet someone with refreshingly socialist views for a change.