Workshop - I picked up four old matching cedar doors from the Grenfell tip recently. Picked them up quite literally as they were lying on a big pile of building rubble. They are pretty rough, with broken glass and 7 or 8 coats of paint ranging from battleship grey, through a festive yellow to a faded eucalypt green. On the plus side, I've salvaged a couple of locks and four hinges.
Even with all that paint and disguise I could tell they were cedar by the colour and softness of the timber where the paint had chipped off. Cedar is magnificent, so highly revered by cabinetmakers in the 1800's that it was referred to as "red gold". These doors, with their hand cut mortise and tenons, deep sculptured moulding and delicately applied shellac, would have provided a beautiful entry to the house they were once a part of. But at the rubbish tip, with all that paint and garbage, well, it was pretty difficult to imagine them ever looking very inviting.
Over the years I've stripped a lot of paint with a hot air gun, which in comparison to sanding is quicker and cleaner. The challenge though is to remove the paint without scorching the raw timber or melting the paint into the grain. My approach is to hold the hot air gun at a 60 degree angle, 5cm-10cm away from the surface and crank the temperature up to around 500c. Using a very sharp chisel to lift the paint I direct the airflow about 3cm ahead of the chisel. Bearing in mind that the idea is to soften the paint not liquefy it, the trick is to keep moving rather than hover on one spot for too long.
It's a slow process that takes 3 to 5 hours a door but eventually the years of paint, dirt and grime fall away to reveal the gem underneath.
Thought - As Christians our purpose in life is to grow more like Jesus and to achieve that we sometimes need some serious renovating before the gem underneath is revealed. And just like stripping paint, this isn't an instant process, especially if our true purpose is obscured by a bunch of layers we've spent years building up. I like how Eugene Peterson put it in his paraphrase, The Message "...everything connected with that old way of life has to go. It's rotten through and through. Get rid of it! And take on an entirely new way of life -- a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you" (Ephesians 4:22-24 The Message)
