Hearth & Soul

The most fulfilling renovation technique doesn’t involve adding anything to a
house. Instead, you concentrate on removing things. In more than one instance,
simply stripping away the layers heaped on a house over the years has resulted
in a major transformation. In one little 50-year-old house we bought from the
original owner, we tore out heavy drapes, venetian blinds, roller blinds, foil
contact paper covering each window pane (what was that 70-year-old woman
hiding?), burglar bars, heavy wall-to-wall carpet, and sagging wall paper.
Voila! Light, bright, and renovated.

Now we’re at it again with a tiny house we just bought in South Austin.

Only it’s a little more complex because not only did we tear out carpet,
blinds, a wall, vinyl flooring, and some wallboard, but we’re also faced with
layers of paint stacked on top of one another in what I now feel is a criminal
combination: cheap latex on top of cheap latex on top of several coats of
ancient oil-base paint. The whole mess is peeling like a frat boy after spring
break. I cannot — even though it’s “just a rent house” — slap another coat of
latex on and go on my guilt-free way. For such a heinous act, I would certainly
toil forever in the special remodelers’ Hell, destined to pull ring-chank nails
from oak planks and install fiberglass insulation in the nude for eternity. I
am resolved to the formidable task of stripping off all the paint, coating the
wood with a latex primer like KilzII, and starting fresh with Glidden 2000, a
great “no VOC” paint that is increasingly difficult to come by.
(I found a
few cans at Builder’s Square. Home Depot is so busy recruiting surly sales
clerks in back braces, they’ve stopped carrying it.)

But there’s still one ugly word which weakens my resolve — lead.
According to the National Lead Information Center any house built before 1978
may contain lead-based paint. Most homes built before 1960 contain
heavily leaded paints. That would be this house. And the EPA, in its typical
ostrich approach to problem solving, recommends you simply don’t renovate if
you suspect lead paint in your house. Unless of course you “open and close
windows with painted frames and sills” or “bump furniture or other objects into
painted walls.” Then you better fix it, especially if you have children or
pregnant women (as opposed to pregnant men?) in the house. Kids and kids-to-be
absorb more lead than grown-ups and overexposure to this heavy metal can cause
learning disabilities, decreased growth, and brain damage.

But how do you fix it? Ironically, I received my packet of lead information
after I came home from a day of stripping the woodwork in the little house with
a heat gun (bad, bad, bad) and I felt like dog hooey. While what I thought was
surely acute lead poisoning turned out to be the worst flu/cold/living death
I’ve had in decades, I’m taking the well-timed receipt of this packet of
information as an omen. I gotta be careful. I’m going to clean that house
within an inch of its life with trisodium phosphate. I’m going to eat beans and
calcium, which inhibit the absorption of lead, until I qualify as a gas-fired
power plant. I’m going to dispose of all my lead-infested clothes and go on a
shopping spree. (Can I deduct a trip to the mall as a medical expense?) I’m not
going to let small children or pregnant women chew on the door frames in the
house. I’m gonna eat apple pectin, which is thought to eliminate lead from the
body, until I turn to cider. And I’m going to give you the number for the Lead
Information Center — 800-LEAD-FYI — so you can send off for their brochures
and be as paranoid as me.

I’m also going to check for solutions at the Green Building Conference at the
Austin Convention Center November 7-10.

This article appears in November 8 • 1996 and November 8 • 1996 (Cover).