Putting the Labor into Labor Day Weekend

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I'm a "taper" at heart. I buy rolls and rolls of the blue stuff from 3M in a variety of widths. However, sometimes when I need to paint a multi-pane window, I cheat and leave it to the single edge razor or scrape a really clean line around each pane.

This weekend my scraping plan backfired!

Note to Self: "Under no circumstances, should you ever, ever, paint etched or frosted glass — because the scraping scenario simply doesn't work." The paint in effect, is not on the surface, but rather is deeply embedded at the microspec level. Let me back up and give you the context.

When the new Master Bathroom barn doors arrived, they came with the wrong glass in the panels. The glass was a beautiful single reed pattern but you could clearly see through it - which didn't inspire privacy confidence for the bathroom. So we had the doors etched which solved the problem and gave us a beautiful frosted glass finish within the reed pattern. 

When it came time to paint I didn't tape — figuring I would just scrape the paint off when it was dry. Big Mistake.

The is the window after painting. The lower left is the result after the normal amount of scraping with a single edge razor blade.

The is the window after painting. The lower left is the result after the normal amount of scraping with a single edge razor blade.

Realizing my mistake I started running through possible remedies. Scrubbing with steel wool didn't take it off. A wet SOS pad did make a dent in it, but made a huge mess with blue drips all over the doors. A copper wire brush took off the paint, but scratched the glass too much and a plastic scrubber pad took far too much elbow grease.

The tools that finally helped me clean up my mistake.

The tools that finally helped me clean up my mistake.

In the end, a combination of single edge razor blades and the finishing wheels on my Dremel were the winning combination. So 60 hours, 8 blades and 10 finishing wheels later, I have clean windows and am getting ready to repaint — this time I will tape first.

It's way too early to laugh about it yet, but I look forward to telling the story with a chuckle sometime in the future.

—Laurie
#NowIKnowBetter