We live in a 1920s frame house. We knew when we bought it that it would need to be painted in the not-too-distant future, and we started getting estimates back in the spring. The painters are prepping this week and I am trying to remain calm.
(Whenever I think about remaining calm, I remember my advisor from my master's program. He was a very intense man, and his approach to relaxation techniques in therapy was to lean into a client and urge him, with furrowed brow, "REMAIN CALM." Soothing it was not.)
We have some lead paint to deal with, and we've been talking for a long time now about how to manage it safely. The painters were supposed to scrape while the paint was wet, to cut down on the dust. I'm still worried. Do you think they'd mind if I followed them around in a hazmat suit, spritzing the siding with water as they worked? They were supposed to shop-vac all the mess at the end of each day, but yesterday they did a less than thorough job with brooms instead. Today they're working by the doors, so I'll need to request a more exacting clean-up if they take the same tack again. Right now there's no way in that's not strewn with paint chips.
My friend in the neighborhood, who also likes old houses but freaks out about lead, was talking me down earlier. Be fanatical about hand-washing, she said, and about taking shoes off inside. Give the boys calcium supplements at night and iron supplements in the morning, so that they'll just excrete any lead they take in instead of absorbing it. Don't panic.
REMAIN CALM, as my professor would have said. It's going to be a pretty creamy yellow when they're done. (Glad Yellow, it's called -- an appropriate color for the Gladly house, no?) I just wish we could jump from here to there without the mess and bother in between.
REMAIN CALM!! Put down plastic around the house (the exterior) it will help with the clean up and plastic is cheap.
We went through this (our previous home was built in 1919). You will survive and so will your children.
Posted by: Lauren | October 19, 2006 at 05:49 PM
Just be glad that once it goes, it's gone. Better than finding paint chips in the baby's mouth on a random basis.
Posted by: Salome Ellen | October 19, 2006 at 09:24 PM
It is tough to do that kind of renovation when you have kids! My family renovated an 1848 house and found approximately one metric ton of lead paint. I agree with your friend regarding the iron/calcium supplementation. When I was in school (chemical engineering undergrad), some of my friends worked on a research project trying to come up with an injection for kids who had been exposed to lead in order to lower the toxicity and used both iron and calcium.
Posted by: Ariella | October 20, 2006 at 09:19 AM