Woo-hoo! Look what I found! I got the wrought ironwork for the door back from the painters a couple of days ago. The orc-factory was even worse than the last couple of visits; the air heavy with chemical smells. So heavy, indeed, that it was almost unbreathable. I was only there for ten minutes, but how you can work there for eight hours a day I have no idea. No one seems to wear a mask, so they don’t appear overly bothered about what hideous lung diseases might be visited upon them in the future. Still, they had done a good job on the ironwork and it is now all glossy and black.
I had had the coat of arms taped over to protect it from the sand blasting as I thought I’d clean it by hand myself, seeing as some of it is beaten copper. I also didn’t want the black paint taken off it. Well, imagine my delight and surprise when I found that the “black paint” wasn’t black paint, it was just tarnish and dirt that was covering up brass. Two hours of cleaning on Christmas Day has produced what you see above. What I started with is below. I’ve always seen the door looking like this and have never cleaned it, so you can reckon that it has gone at least 10 years without a clean. I suspect though, that it has never been cleaned at all, in which case it is probably more like 30 years as that is probably when the door dates from. Hardly surprising then that it took two hours of fearsome rubbing with the magic “white stone” powder.
My new door should be finished hopefully at the end of January (can only work on it on Saturdays now) so in the meantime, I have reinstalled the ironwork on the old naff door. At least there is now somewhere to hang the Christmas wreath.
