Outside scraping complete!

First bit of news is that we finally finished scraping the outside. Although it looks from the picture that there is still a lot of paint at the bottom, it is clear enough for us to red oxide it. The third side is complete, and the dome has now been finished. We completed this during the week when we popped down a couple of evenings for an hour or so.

We have taken stock of where we are, and with the expertise of Tony at Unicorn have worked out a plan from here. We had decided there just wasn't the time to complete the inside ahead of May 16. With the good weather we've been having, and the weather forecast over the next few days, we have decided to try and scrape the majority of the paint from the inside. We're not going to remove the back board, as it just isn't necessary to repaint that side.

Today we started on the inside of the dome, which wasn't particularly pleasant as it was very warm up there, and there were shed loads of cobwebs.

The picture here raises an interesting question which I need to have with Unicorn. You can see a great deal of the top coat has been removed in this picture (it just falls off), and underneath is an original white coat which does scrape off fairly easily, but is also good enough to form a base. As I've blogged before, the kiosk has been painted incorrectly over the years, and we intend on rectifying that. However, how I've been told it should be done, and how the kiosk was originally painted are slightly different. Kiosks that I've seen restored have the white paint come down to the bottom of the TELEPHONE sign, above the bar that runs round the kiosk which has been painted red. It is clear from this picture, that there is original white paint on the bar and immediately underneath it. Where the bar is at right angles with the vertical side, it goes back to red paint. I'm going to gather more detailed pictures as we go along here, as I want the kiosk to be as original as possible.

So, the current plan is to scrape the inside during the week and red oxide next weekend.