A coat of paint

Hermann needs a coat of paint, so we bought a load of NATO green military paint (my idea, and I put my foot down about the colour, I'm afraid) from a nice man on the internet, and set about stripping him and rubbing him down. Me, Carol and Top Bloke Edd borrowed a building with enough space to work in which was sheltered from the rain. The rubbing and stripping process took most of the morning (after an 8.00am start), but by 12.00, we were ready for the next stage. The rusty areas on the roof were given a coat of Red Oxide primer, after a thorough grinding back of all the rust, and he was ready for the first coat.

The thing with Matt paint is that it does not matter how it is applied. You can brush it on, roller it or even use your fingers. Luckily, we had enough brushes and rollers to do the first two, although by the end of the process, we may as well have used our fingers looking at the state of us.

Coat one saw him looking like this, a bit rough, but pretty much covered. After leaving him overnight with everything open, we returned to do coat two. This was a much quicker process, and by 2.00pm, we had pretty much finished.

That left me and Edd to start making some sidebars, and I tried my hand at welding for the first time. After a couple more hours the paint was dry enough to put all the bits back on and take him home. A punishing weekends work, but the end result is well worth it. He looks all mean and moody now!