Please forgive the indulgence, but my Rudy is one handsome little man and I couldn't resist.
About four or five years ago I spent an entire summer chipping off the old paint from these cast iron balusters. It was hot, dirty, painstaking work. I used a ball peen hammer, a chisel and then wire disks on my drill to sand down the surface.
Then I hired a cast iron restoration company to remove the hand railings along with the entire fence along the sidewalk. They restored these pieces in their shop and returned everything, all brand spanking beautiful.
I would have done the balusters along the front fence, but I didn't relish the idea of sitting on the sidewalk while people stepped over me on their way down the street. Somehow that didn't appeal to me!
The job cost a small fortune to send out. But Rafael, the Cast Iron guy told me I saved about $5K by doing part of the work myself. Worth it.
6 comments:
*Mwah* to Rudy, such a handsome devil!
that's a great shot of Rudy! And nice railings!
Kudos to you for doing all that work. We're about to have our floors redone, and thought for a long time about doing it ourselves. The fear of ruining our floors has won over our wish to save money on this one, though C wants to sand our baseboards as soon as we get the furniture out of the room.
There's something so civilized about a stoop. A crazy hold over from the Dutch, to be sure, but still a very satisfying place to watch the world pass.
And we often do just that. Me, Lola and Rudy sitting on the stoop after dinner, on a nice evening. They love it!
Are you ever brave enough to have a drink on the stoop?
Oh, I've been known to have a nice cold beer on a hot summer evening, for sure. Very refreshing!
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