Pillar Update

Did a little more work on my cemetery pillars the past couple of days. I finished carving the stonework into the foam on all four sides and then painted it with a coat of Drylok. I opted not to use any Monster Mud because I didn't want to cover up any of the detail, and in the end it really wasn't necessary.

(What's interesting is how the blue ink from the foam mixed with the Drylok, yet in that one spot where there's an "S" it didn't. Nor was that visible before I started painting. Ooooooh! Spooky!)

After that coat dried I painted it all over with a coat of black paint. The goal will be to build up the paint layers in successively lighter colors with the end result that it looks like stone. We'll see.

Painting melted foam isn't as easy as you might think. Getting the brush into all the nooks and crannies that are formed is a time-sapping, laborious process. My neighbor was leaning out her window watching me and offering commentary on my work (Yes! That's what I need!) when she asked, "Wouldn't it be faster to spray paint it?" I  explained about the melting properties of spray paint on foam so that I'd still have to provide some sort of primer coat on it. Plus, spray paint can get expensive, though the basic flat black cans at Home Depot and Lowe's are cheap at just $0.99.

As I sat there jabbing my brush into the crevices, I suddenly wanted to smack myself upside the head. I have a compressor with a sprayer attachment! So I went hooked everything up, and in 5 minutes time had the entire pillar painted. What had taken me three times as long to do just half of one face of the pillar took me a third of the time to complete the rest of it.

Don't know why I drew a blank on the spray unit before, but I guess my neighbor's colloquy really was what I needed after all.