Painting progress

An email enquiry has flooded in from a Mr Rainman of Rickmansworth asking about our painting progress, so here goes:

At last we're making a bit of progress with painting Herbie's scabby bits.  Weather too hot or too wet has held us back quite a bit, although I got a lot of prep done. The roof and the handrail are top priority.

Having removed the old rotten handrail wood and got rid of the rust on the metal beneath thanks to angle grinder and Fertan, weve decided not to replace the wood. Now Herbie's handrail will just be like other boats.  It needed a lot of Isopon filler to smooth out the worst of the pitted metal

but it's got us an acceptable surface to paint on.  So I did just that.

So now we have a Fertan treated rail, with one coat of Hammerite rust beater on top and pits smoothed with filler on top of that (I checked that you can fill over paint), then a second coat of the hammerite on top of the filler, and as I write Kath is putting a layer of Craftmaster grey undercoat on top of that.

 The grey is a better colour underneath the final red gloss to come later. Kath's just finished so we can take a look. After taking of the masking tape Herbie looks weird to us without the red stripe.

We're expected rain for the next three days, so I thought I'd not leave the tape on that long. I'll have to tape it up again, before a coat of the red.

Meanwhile, you may have noticed that I got a coat of paint on a big area of roof this morning before breakfast (taking a tip from the Archers who always seem to have breakfast after milking the pigs or whatever it is they do). Even though the roof was cool, the paint was still dragging so I stirred quite a bit of Craftmaster PPA (Phil's Paint Additive) which helped a bit. As you can see, I've only painted to the centre line because I can't reach further and my old knees aren't really up to kneeling on the roof to paint the full width. And of course that's not the final coat.   The other side is another chapter for another day.  This painting lark is a non trivial task, especially when you're dodging the weather. 

So despite the weather not playing ball, we are getting some useful bits done. Its worth reminding our selves of what the roof and rail were like before we started. Here's a bit of the port side we haven't got at yet and the side we have just done was a lot worse.

and here's what the rail that we have done was like when we started 

More than anything I'm relieved that we have managed to find a good solution to the handrail.  The wood had it's merits, but it needed too frequent repainting and it was rotting in a number of places.

Poor Gertie is getting frustrated at being kept in while paint dries. We don't want her walking all over wet paint.

So we soldier on.