Day 30 – Saturday, July 10 – Two steps forward, two steps back, one more forward:

Goals: Finish painting the harp. Start work on the veneer patch on the back.

Music: Gary Burton and Keith Jarrett and Throb: Gary Burton; Bona Fide’s “Royal Function”; Serge Chaloff’s “Boston Blow-Up!”

First step forward was taking a wire brush fitting and my drill to the harp and getting off all the dust, rust, crap, and most of the paint. My original intention was to get all the way down to the metal, but I quickly realized that the bottom layers of paint and corrosion were not going to come off without some serious work and/or stripping chemicals. Since I got everything actually looking pretty decent, I figured painting over it was the way to go, so once I reached a certain level of cleanliness, I was ready to paint. (This was all done about two weeks ago.)

Second step forward was painting the harp. I did the underside in black and since nobody is going to see it, possibly ever again, I got it pretty clean, wiped it down and spray painted it black. It looked good. The top side I had to mask the pins and agraffes, and I spray painted it a caramel bronze. It looked really good, but too dark. I made up my mind to spray paint a second coat of bronze gold.

What I thought was the third step forward, and this was the first work actually done on day 30, was spray paint the harp gold. It seemed to be coating nicely, sitting pretty on top of the caramel bronze, getting shiny and bright. I was just about finished spraying the whole thing when I noticed a small patch of paint, maybe one inch wide and three inches long, just bubbling up. Huh, that’s weird, I thought. I watched it and waited to see if it would go down, but it didn’t. First step backward.

I grabbed a rag and wiped at it. Big mistake. It completely tore up and left an uneven patch. Crap, now what am I going to do, I asked myself. I started to think of ways I could cut my losses and make the paint look acceptable, when I noticed another small patch bubbling up, maybe one inch around. I didn’t wipe it. Then I noticed another patch, and another, all bubbling up, crinkling, and looking like crap. Well, wiping didn’t work, but leaving the paint like that isn’t going to work either, I thought, so I wiped at all the spots.

Big backward step, that.

There was nothing for it. The new paint was obviously interacting with the old to create this disaster. I couldn’t figure why, since the first coat went on with no trouble. Maybe the heat, maybe the humidity, maybe something got on it while I was storing it in the garage. Who knows? I decided, everything had to come off, all the way to the metal. New paint, old paint, rust, crud, everything.

Knowing there was no way in hell I could get all that off just with a wire brush and a drill, I pulled out my can of paint stripper. I covered the harp in paint stripper and scraped, and scraped and scraped. I used the wire brush, the scraper on the end of the brush, and a putty knife. I scraped and scraped and scraped. I put on another coat of stripper and scraped some more. Finally, I hosed the harp down and washed it with tri-sodium phosphate solution and let it dry in the sun. It looks good. It is essentially clean, but there are just one or two more spots that need to have paint removed. No way am I making that mistake again.

The picture shows the big step forward.

For kicks, compare that to when I pulled it out of the piano a month and a half ago.

I have to buy another wire brush and some primer and more paint, so I guess on day 31 I’ll tackle the veneer instead.

All future decisions on what action to take will be based solely on secure steps forward. Less frustration, more progress!