Still Strippin' - A Psychological Approach

If somebody ever tells you that stripping paint is easy, go ahead and bite their finger off. It is probably being waggled at you as they say this. It’s not to say that it’s particularly difficult, say like reassembling a Wankel rotary engine, but is more akin to exfoliating oneself armed with only a pair of Hello Kitty™ tweezers; it takes a very long time to work through every edge, corner and crevice and you keep finding bits you previously overlooked. It almost aches as much, too…bit by bit. Sometimes I imagine our house is screaming with every passing scrape, other times, it’s just me doing the imaginary scream. This does nothing to make it more bearable. And then I look back over what I had just accomplished, and realize that it can be measured in mere inches.

It’s those edges and corners & such that take so long…and those places that were never stained/shellacked prior to painting…and undersides and curves. Will it never end, I keep asking myself. I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have a proverbial clock/calendar to stare at.

So kiddies, the moral here is: if you plan to strip paint (especially roomfuls), do not put yourself in a position where you keep looking at the time when you have to be finished. Find that "zone", that zen moment, and just focus on what you are working on now, and not what you have to have done then. It would be better if you had no particular time to be done, but that is seldom practical. Just try to not think about it too much. You will have alot of time to practice this.