The Riddle of the Sanders – Part 1

For once, a post about how to do something, that has been the cause of me quietly losing what remains of my mind.

Sanding the ceiling flat.

Which it certainly isn’t at the moment. The question is, how did the original painters get paint blobs so consistently even over the entire surface of the ceiling? And then, when it came for a repaint about – oh – 20 years ago, why did they leave the original, flaked and chipped paint there, and then paint over the surface, rather than sanding it down flat. You can see that half of the centre of the plank is chipped away, and then rapidly painted over.

And then, to complete the god-awful eyesore, the whole lot is rounded off with a couple of florescent tubes, and a switch wacked into the door-frame, the one original charming feature left?! This is, by the way, a strange and unusual Australian habit: they even have something called an architrave switch which fits into the door-jam.

So, to get the room back to some semblance of normality, I’ve been sanding down the ceiling. It’s been taking up hours of my so called life, and I now know just what it feels like to be a bottom dog.

The phrase Top Dog comes from the convict era, when logs were held in place by irons called dogs, when they were sawn into planks by hand. The chap on the top had the best job – plenty of air, good exercise – while the man on the bottom got all the sawdust in his eyes while standing in a filthy pit.

Which is just how I’m feeling at the moment: to sand down my ceiling planks, I need to stand on the top of a ladder, holding a large belt sander over my head, and watch as this constant stream lands in my eyes. Its of sawdust, mixed with lead paint.

It does however get a lovely smooth finish – which is better than a kick in the teeth by a blind horse.