I believe I have finally come to terms with what happened this last Saturday (10/6). At least enough that I may relay the story to you, my faithful audience, for you have a right to know the current status of our progress. I digress.
Team Awesome had previous planned to meet up at Mr. Bundy's house around 9-10am. I know that I personally awoke to my alarm that morning excited to get a major part of our project done and out of the way. I got myself up and ready, planning just enough time to stop by McDonald's and pick us up some Sausage Egg McMuffins with Cheese. I arrived at the Bundy household around 9:30am, and finding myself to be the first one there, I walked up to the door and made my presence known. Mr. Bundy showed up at the door and we walked on down to the garage. There he began to inform me of his ideas of what we could do where, and what he had as far as materials for us to work with. Luckily, we had planned to bring most everything we needed ourselves, so we didn't have to rely on him for much. After a few minutes I asked him if he had gotten the air compressor from his dad like he said he was going to, and he said he had just called him and that we were going to head out to pick it up in a few minutes. And so it began.
Arriving a few minutes later at the humble abode of Mr. Bundy's father, Mr. Bundy, we discovered that he was in the process of changing the oil in the air compressor. What a funny coincidence that this was the one time that we needed to borrow it, and that it was also the first time his father had decided to change the oil in it. So we ended up waiting about 20 minutes or so for him to finish before we loaded it up into the back of his dad's truck. He followed us back to Mr. Bundy's house and as we arrived we pulled in just behind Jason and Blake. We got the air compressor unloaded and started setting up our operation.
We decided to put the doors on a couple sawhorses so that we would be able to stand up while
we worked on them instead of kneeling all day. This ended up working beautifully, as it allowed for less wobbling of the doors as well as preserving our delicate frames. Our first hiccup came with the discovery that the oscillating sander we had been lent was leaking air badly, and as such worked about as well as a tricycle would when going at 300mph. Thus we retired the famed oscillator and instead opted for electric sanders. The electric sanders actuall
y turned out to work surprisingly well for what they were, so it wasn't all that bad. Mr. Bundy's dad dropped by about an hour later with a 2-handed electric paint stripper. The thing was a beast. Jason volunteered to figure out how to use it, so for the rest of the day Jason would take the first pass at all the doors. We gave him a hard time about carving his own "topographical map" on one of the doors, but always in jest because we knew we wouldn't be able to do any better.
Luck
ily for us, the doors we had already primed proved very easy to prepare again. The rattle can primer came off with basically no effort at all. So much so that Jason was able to strip both of them down in the time that it took Blake and I to prep one of the still-painted doors. Somewhere along the line we made another interesting discovery regarding the front passenger door. When we laid it on the sawhorses, we noticed that the plate that the bottom hinge attaches to had rusted out and snapped off, and was currently lying inside of the door. We had a good long gander and nervous giggle about that, and continued on our merry way, chalking it up as another new addition to our 'to do' list.
Around 2pm we called Greg, as he should have been done with the SAT's around 1pm
or so. He made his way over and started taping off the doors we had already fully prepped. Around 4pm we were finished prepping all of the doors, and Greg was about halfway done taping them off. Blake and I began to investigate our primer and air gun situation as Jason and Greg pushed ever onward. You see, none of us had ever used an air gun before, so we were fearing the worst. After we decided that the gun would be safe because the primer was indeed lacquer thinnable, we began to look around for someplace to set up an impromptu paint booth. We had several issues confronting us though, the largest of these being that it had just begun to rain pretty steadily. We also had to worry about our anticipated overspray as we didn't want to cover any of the cars, houses, or anything else with primer besides the doors.
We eventually decided that the retaining wall held the most promise. We did our best to make ourselves a little alcove out of tarps and bedsheets, but it was very small, and lacked sides. This was alright until Blake had to kneel on the gravel to spray the door, and the rain started coming in sideways, covering the door in water. Not good. To add to the asthetic pleasure we were currently drowning in, the primer was doing somet
hing that looked more like spitting out onto the door, rather than spraying. Blake was very unhappy with how it was looking and how rough it was, but we consoled him by telling him we would just sand it later. That said, Blake went on to finish priming the entire door. Now came the part no one had bothered to think about yet. We needed to move the door to under Mr. Bundy's deck to let it dry before it's next coat. The only complication being that we needed to keep it as dry as possible in transit and it was still pouring. We gave Blake the job of laying the paper out under the deck so that the door would have something to rest on instead of bare bricks.
I don't know who suggested it or what we were thinking, but the next thing I knew Greg and I were holding a flowered bedsheet over the heads of Blake and Jason as they carried the door. That was quite the experience, and the door probably would have sayed drier had we thrown it into the Atlantic Ocean. Once we reached the deck, we found that Blake had apparently not been able to manage the spreading out of the paper. Instead, he had wadded it up and thrown it in a corner. Needless to say Greg, Jason and I were dumbfounded as we quickly tried to spread them out. We got the door set down and Blake went to work dabbing the water off of it. The next excitement came when Blake kned he had dried the whole door, only to look up and see a new bead running down the front. He looked up and realized that our drying station was perfect, minus the leaky deck.
Team Awesome had previous planned to meet up at Mr. Bundy's house around 9-10am. I know that I personally awoke to my alarm that morning excited to get a major part of our project done and out of the way. I got myself up and ready, planning just enough time to stop by McDonald's and pick us up some Sausage Egg McMuffins with Cheese. I arrived at the Bundy household around 9:30am, and finding myself to be the first one there, I walked up to the door and made my presence known. Mr. Bundy showed up at the door and we walked on down to the garage. There he began to inform me of his ideas of what we could do where, and what he had as far as materials for us to work with. Luckily, we had planned to bring most everything we needed ourselves, so we didn't have to rely on him for much. After a few minutes I asked him if he had gotten the air compressor from his dad like he said he was going to, and he said he had just called him and that we were going to head out to pick it up in a few minutes. And so it began.
Arriving a few minutes later at the humble abode of Mr. Bundy's father, Mr. Bundy, we discovered that he was in the process of changing the oil in the air compressor. What a funny coincidence that this was the one time that we needed to borrow it, and that it was also the first time his father had decided to change the oil in it. So we ended up waiting about 20 minutes or so for him to finish before we loaded it up into the back of his dad's truck. He followed us back to Mr. Bundy's house and as we arrived we pulled in just behind Jason and Blake. We got the air compressor unloaded and started setting up our operation.
We decided to put the doors on a couple sawhorses so that we would be able to stand up while
we worked on them instead of kneeling all day. This ended up working beautifully, as it allowed for less wobbling of the doors as well as preserving our delicate frames. Our first hiccup came with the discovery that the oscillating sander we had been lent was leaking air badly, and as such worked about as well as a tricycle would when going at 300mph. Thus we retired the famed oscillator and instead opted for electric sanders. The electric sanders actuall
y turned out to work surprisingly well for what they were, so it wasn't all that bad. Mr. Bundy's dad dropped by about an hour later with a 2-handed electric paint stripper. The thing was a beast. Jason volunteered to figure out how to use it, so for the rest of the day Jason would take the first pass at all the doors. We gave him a hard time about carving his own "topographical map" on one of the doors, but always in jest because we knew we wouldn't be able to do any better.Luck
ily for us, the doors we had already primed proved very easy to prepare again. The rattle can primer came off with basically no effort at all. So much so that Jason was able to strip both of them down in the time that it took Blake and I to prep one of the still-painted doors. Somewhere along the line we made another interesting discovery regarding the front passenger door. When we laid it on the sawhorses, we noticed that the plate that the bottom hinge attaches to had rusted out and snapped off, and was currently lying inside of the door. We had a good long gander and nervous giggle about that, and continued on our merry way, chalking it up as another new addition to our 'to do' list.Around 2pm we called Greg, as he should have been done with the SAT's around 1pm
or so. He made his way over and started taping off the doors we had already fully prepped. Around 4pm we were finished prepping all of the doors, and Greg was about halfway done taping them off. Blake and I began to investigate our primer and air gun situation as Jason and Greg pushed ever onward. You see, none of us had ever used an air gun before, so we were fearing the worst. After we decided that the gun would be safe because the primer was indeed lacquer thinnable, we began to look around for someplace to set up an impromptu paint booth. We had several issues confronting us though, the largest of these being that it had just begun to rain pretty steadily. We also had to worry about our anticipated overspray as we didn't want to cover any of the cars, houses, or anything else with primer besides the doors. 
We eventually decided that the retaining wall held the most promise. We did our best to make ourselves a little alcove out of tarps and bedsheets, but it was very small, and lacked sides. This was alright until Blake had to kneel on the gravel to spray the door, and the rain started coming in sideways, covering the door in water. Not good. To add to the asthetic pleasure we were currently drowning in, the primer was doing somet
hing that looked more like spitting out onto the door, rather than spraying. Blake was very unhappy with how it was looking and how rough it was, but we consoled him by telling him we would just sand it later. That said, Blake went on to finish priming the entire door. Now came the part no one had bothered to think about yet. We needed to move the door to under Mr. Bundy's deck to let it dry before it's next coat. The only complication being that we needed to keep it as dry as possible in transit and it was still pouring. We gave Blake the job of laying the paper out under the deck so that the door would have something to rest on instead of bare bricks.I don't know who suggested it or what we were thinking, but the next thing I knew Greg and I were holding a flowered bedsheet over the heads of Blake and Jason as they carried the door. That was quite the experience, and the door probably would have sayed drier had we thrown it into the Atlantic Ocean. Once we reached the deck, we found that Blake had apparently not been able to manage the spreading out of the paper. Instead, he had wadded it up and thrown it in a corner. Needless to say Greg, Jason and I were dumbfounded as we quickly tried to spread them out. We got the door set down and Blake went to work dabbing the water off of it. The next excitement came when Blake kned he had dried the whole door, only to look up and see a new bead running down the front. He looked up and realized that our drying station was perfect, minus the leaky deck.
Now it was really starting to rain. With our exceptionally moderate success fresh in our minds, we pondered whether or not we should move the 'paint booth' just inside the garage, as Mrs. Bundy had told us we could if we needed to. After a semi-heated debate, we started migrating into the garage. Once everything was moved inside the whole process seemed to be going much smoother. We no longer had the rain to contend with, so that was a big plus. Yet once again we were baffled as we observed that the primer was still coming out less smooth than we had hoped. Deciding that it was good enough, we pressed onward. Greg finished getting all four of the doors taped with some help from Jason as Blake and I worked on priming them.
Greg had to leave shortly after he finished taping the last door. This left Jason, Blake and I to finish up the project. This was fine until disaster struck Team Awesome square in the forehead. We had one door with two coats of primer, one with a single coat, and one with half a coat when the air compressor died on us. Not just stalled or leaked, it died outright. Despite our best efforts, we could not get it to turn back on. Our hopes of finishing that night went up in non-compressed air.
This was very hard for us to swallow. This meant that we wouldn't be able to reattatch the doors, leaving Mr. Bundy with no doors indefinitely as we enter into the wettest time of the year. It also meant that the ~$20 in primer that was still left in the gun was going to go to waste. Not only that, but we didn't have any way to force thinner through the gun, so it was very 
possibly going to sieze up and leave us stranded next time. Mr. Bundy's dad came down and tried to fix it, but he pretty much summed it up in one two word phrase I won't mention here.
possibly going to sieze up and leave us stranded next time. Mr. Bundy's dad came down and tried to fix it, but he pretty much summed it up in one two word phrase I won't mention here.We had done everything we could do, and we all set to cleaning up the garage with heavy hearts full of disappointment and maybe even a dash of shame. For the first time in the Paint the Pig project, we had effectively failed what we set out to do.
That said, we're all geared up and ready to redeem ourselves on our no-school day this Friday. Check back this weekend to see if we succeeded, or if Team Awesome again finds itself in Sadland. We're makin' that lemonade, don't you worry.
