Team Awesome Strikes Again

We were finally able to put together another work party this weekend. The day off school on Monday provided a great opportunity for Team Awesome to get into gear and make some real progress. At about 9:45 am I arrived at J.J.'s house to pick him up. We were lacking certain required tools (a.k.a. airbrush), so we had to drive up the hill to Blake's house to get it. For some suspicious reason, Blake himself provided us the air brush, but was not able to work on the pig at all that day. Very sketchy. After we had acquired the air brush along with a few other things, we drove out to Home Depot to pick up some more necessary items. Thanks to the Paint the Pig fund, we got about 6 rolls of masking tape, a paint ripping disc, and about 3600 square feet of painters plastic, which sounds like a lot, but in actuality, would really only cover a few houses. We soon after arrived at Mr. Bundy's abode, and were a bit surprised, but pleased, of course, to be greeted by his good friend John Savage. The staff development day had caused Mr. Bundy himself to have "team meetings" and things of that sort for most of the day. Jason was also to arrive late due to some "eye appointment" that he said he had. Again, very sketchy. Anyway, J.J. and I had this awesome new paint ripper thing to try out.

We started work on the back corner of the passenger side of the Pig. First we took off the side vent and light, and then we successfully stripped a few screws on the tail light, which was pretty much impossible to get out. We had to leave it in. Then we were finally able to start the real work. In an hour or two, I had ripped the paint off of almost the entire section we were working on, and J.J. had cleaned some grease. That is to say, J.J. had cleaned a lot of grease. The tailgate was kind of covered in it. He even put some little clippy bits into a jar of clear lacquer thinner, which turned opaquely black by the end of the day. At this point, Jason arrived, and we tried once more to get the tail light off. This resulted in a couple more stripped screws and a slightly bent screwdriver. The vicegrips were just a little too tight. By then, all the paint that could be ripped off was gone, so we had to move to hand sanding. We decided that was just lame and used the electric pad sanders instead. There were some super tricky spots around the tail light that had to be done by hand, though. Jason then called Mr. Bundy, using the house phone, to ask for some pizza and was greeted with a "hey baby" from him, thinking that it was his wife. Of course, when Mr. Bundy arrived, we welcomed him back with a "hey baby" of our own. Then he left again to get pizza. So we started working again.



Using our tape and a bit of plastic, we covered exposed bits of the car in no time and started mixin' paint. The paint gun was a little iffy, but it worked okay, and since the infamous paint gun master Blake was not in attendance, we tried to fix it, failed, and used it anyway. Pizza then arrived! That was probably the best part. We had some juice boxes, too. Back to work. We painted a bunch of coats of primer, realized we had mixed a bit too much paint, and finally decided it was pretty dark. So we cleaned up, unmasked the car, and reassembled it. It's only got paint on the right side now, so it has a sweet off-kilter, asymmetrical kind of "sketchy" look to it. Bummer I didn't get a final picture, but it was getting late by that time, and I'm not sure my phone has a flash. Next, we went home.

Work party: Accomplished!