Dismantling the Faux-erplace

It was the wackiest thing in the house, bar-none, and now it’s just a Kilz-swipe away from complete extinction. In a sense, I feel bad about destroying such a one-of-a-kind design element. In another sense, not so much. Before vs. after:

The cool thing is that if I reversed the order of the photos, it’d still look like I’d done something.

Yeah, all I did was knock the “mantle” part off of it. But still. Took at *least* 20 minutes. Prior to destruction, I showed this feature to a guest.

Her: They just painted the wall like a fireplace.

Me: Yeah.

Her: But it’s just a cold air return.

Me: Yeah.

Her: So what were they…?

Me: Yeah.

Her: Oh.

Me: Yeah.

In a few days, Kilz ftw.

Other than that, yesterday was another day of sanding and shop-vac’ing. You can’t tell me this doesn’t look like fun:

Unless you want to, then you can.

Here’s a run-down of sanding:

Drum Sander: 2.5 days.

Edge Sander: 1.5 days.

Orbital + Finish Sander: 2 half-days.

Clean-up with Orbital Sander: 2 hours this morning.

Doesn’t actually look that arduous when it’s typed out like that. OTOH, I blew my nose yesterday afternoon and whatever it was that came out was medium-brown.

bkd