I was advised to contact an old man you lives in the next-door village and who is an expert on wrought ironwork. Pierre Emch seems to be well over 80 and spends his days messing about in a forge making things. He looked at the photos of my wrought ironwork but told me that his forte was more the making of things rather than the paint stripping and repainting process. He advised me to visit a car body shop in Lausanne where the owner was a wrought ironwork painting genius, apparently. So I toddled off there and hung around for about 15 minutes while the proprietor finished fitting some snow wheels to a small family saloon.
We got down to business and I explained the work I required. Monsieur Ryffel told me that he would send the ironwork away to be sand-blasted and have undercoat applied and then he would finish the painting job. He estimated that the total cost would be about CHF 600 which seems like a fortune for refurbishing a smallish piece of wrought ironwork. But he told me that if I liked, I could contact the sand-blasting company Aisa in Crissier myself which would reduce some of the effort he would have to go to and consequently, the expense. This sounded like wise advice, so I scooted off to Crissier.
There was no one in the unlit reception, which was at the top of a grim flight of stairs in an industrial building, so I went in search of someone I could talk to. I found the manager in a lean-to booth in a cavernous, dark and filthy workshop. Sand-blasting and painting industrial parts is not a glamorous pastime and this place looked like a subterranean orc factory from the Lord of the Rings, the sort of place that would quickly remove your will to live if you ever had to work there. There were loud crashes and the clanking of chains, black dust coated the floor making your footsteps gritty and the air was thick with the odour of noxious solvents. However, the manager told me that yes, they could strip and paint my ironwork in a couple of days for CHF 120 with no trouble at all, so a deal was done. Quite what the Lausanne body shop thought they were going to do for CHF 600 remains a mystery, but as I don’t intend going back there, one I am unlikely to elucidate.
So the next day, I unbolted the ironwork and returned to the orcs. The door now looks even grimmer, especially as I also unscrewed the handle surrounds for refurbishment at the same time.
I also visited the famous Miroiterie du Léman which is the go-to place for mirrors and all things glass. They are able to supply what I want which comes in one single tint in one single thickness – 6mm – so there weren’t any difficult decisions to make. I handed over another CHF 120 and in a week’s time, I will be the possessor of a piece of one-way mirror.
While I was out and about, I also bought the magic Livos products I will need to oil and weatherproof the finished door. They turn out to be Linus, an undercoat especially made for oak (fortuitous that, as there don’t seem to be any products specific for any other type of wood) and a weatherproofing wood varnish called Kaldet which will finish it off.
It’s all going swimmingly. All I need now is a little more time to actually make the door.
