Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Painting

I've a posted lot in the in the past about the black splotchyness on the front of our house.

This has proven to be a fairly intractable problem. At first, I thought it was mold. Rutger and I applied a mold solution a while ago but that didn't seem to make a difference. There hasn't been any change over the past year and a half as far as my photographs can tell.

It doesn't seem to be a problem with the jarn vitrol, either; the other two exposures, and the small house all look just the way we had hoped. It has to be something with the interaction of sun and wind and rain on the exposed front of the house.

Our plan from last fall was to ask Christer, the archipelago's paint expert, to paint the front exposure in a color that matched the rest of the house. He visited, and we even picked out the paint type and color.

However, Christer investigated and became worried about painting over the jarn vitrol. Rutger and I also spoke to some painting specialists and they both told us the same thing; that painting over the darned jarn was not going to be successful. Our two options were to wait a few more seasons to let the wood weather it away, or to sand-blast to remove the wood's top layer.

Needless to say, we're going to wait. The condition of our house's wood is fine, and we can watch the spots to see if they grow, which would indicate mold again.

The main reason we chose the natural silvering of the jarn vitrol was that we wanted our house to fit into the landscape. We perched our house on top of a rock: we're not big on cutting down trees or landscaping. Sooz and I like the idea of our house turning grey and fitting in. We've got a bit more fitting in than we bargained for, but that's something we're going to live with.


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