Good gracious!! It has already been 5 years since my last post?! I guess it is true that time flies a lot faster as you get older. Anyways, with works and life and pandemic, this site really got neglected, but I am not here today to talk about this. Today, it is about all the home repair projects in the last couple years and what I have learned so far.
One of the first task I took on was re-painting fully rusted round metal handrail back in 2019. This is the type that common seen by a front door. You can see similar picture on the right side here. The project took four weekends to complete. It started with sanding down existing rusted paint. And don't let anyone (or any article) fools you into hand sanding paint off metal handrail. I made the mistake of doing so using sandpapers and wire brushes.
It took a day to get few feet of paint and rust off. Needless to say, I could not imagine finishing the job in few weeks. Fortunately, my brother with more home repair experience loan me a hand sanding machine, which turned out a life saver. The constant vibration for hours from holding the sander was hard on the arms, but at least it got the job done much faster.
Lesson here? Persistent and hard work does not pay off without the right tools/situations. Sure I could have spent couple months sanding the whole rail off using sandpaper and wire brush. But if your time is valuable, buy or borrow a machine to do efficiently if you can. After all, there are still lots of chores to do around the house every weekend. 😅
