The Jensen Project and putting the weekend away.

The Jensen Project is progressing nicely.  My husband and son pulled it out of the garage on Sunday and started to assess what to do next.  Some twelve years earlier my husband and I had sanded the rust off and applied some rust reformer to the car to prevent the rust from reappearing.  We had mixed results.  It worked in some areas but not all.

On Monday, July 4,  they began scraping and sanding all of the rust off the front of the car.  Before they could begin they had to remove the motor and transmission so they could access the engine compartment to prep it for primer and painting.  So right now we have more apart than what we started with but it will make for an overall better job.  After they sanded and removed all the rust they applied naval jelly with steel wool and worked it over the entire front end.  They worked on the Jensen for about 6 hours each.  About 6:30 pm they declared it was ready for primer.  They headed into the shop to get the flatbed to load up the Jensen. 

When they got to the shop they unloaded the Jensen into the car wash bay, just in time before the rain began.  We began wiping the surface clean with a wax and contaminate remover before we could paint.  Next was masking off the areas where we didn’t want any primer.  My husband sprayed an epoxy primer on the areas that they had prepped.  It looked great to see the primer on.  One step closer.

Tuesday evening we masked off the engine compartment area and wheel wells so he could paint it with Imron.  It is a durable chassis paint.  These areas will stay black and will not be painted  “Competition Yellow”.   The Imron will be a very durable paint for the wheel wells and the “Competition Yellow”  paint color is very expensive so choosing where to use them based on cost and utility makes sense.

Tonight my husband added some fiberglass to some areas that he will contour with some body filler later before he paints.  He also painted another layer of primer to the front end.  The reason for this is the first primer adheres well to bare metal but is difficult to sand to a finish that will cover well with paint.  The primer he applied tonight is one that can be sanded to a smooth finish that will produce a nice paint job.

This past weekend while the guys worked on the Jensen, I worked on various projects around the house.  It was so nice to finally have two days in a row at home.  I was very careful not to pull out too much and end my weekend with a lot of things started but not much finished.  I finally finished painting the final coat of paint on the family room and stairway. 

When I was looking for something in the garage on Sunday I ran across the trim paint for our base around the country porch.  The boards have chipped paint on them and were in need of some touch-up so after I had my basement painting mess put away I combined some needed yard work along with the painting.  As I worked my way around the base of the porch scraping and painting, I trimmed the grass and pulled the weeds around the flowers.

I can’t believe that the Fourth of July weekend has come and gone.  For me it always seemed to say that the summer was over.  It was always time to start thinking about back to school.  I haven’t taught school for the past three years now so somehow I feel like I have more summer left without preparing for my students or getting my own kids ready for school.  They are grown and can get themselves ready for college each fall.  In fact they are offended if I step in to help get ready for school or make a suggestion.  Afterall, they are adults.  Except, of course, when it comes to my checkbook.

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