Sunday, September 21, 2008

I thought I was done with tar...

I spent nearly three hours this afternoon sitting on the driveway by the back door, trying to remove the tar that had splattered up onto the new storm door during our paving project. We had realized - too late, obviously - that we should drape a tarp over the door to ensure the splatter didn't mar the pretty new door.

Since then, I've repainted the foundation to cover the splatters along the driveway. We tried a couple different products to remove the tar from the siding and back door, gingerly testing inconspicuous areas. One removed the finish from the aluminum siding entirely, exposing shiny metal!

Today, I finally decided to give it some real elbow grease. I grabbed the one that didn't hurt the siding - a Turtle Wax bug and tar remover - and doused a couple square inches of the bottom of the door, then waited 10 minutes instead of the suggested one. Sponge in hand and fingers crossed, I rubbed until the tar bubbles began to give way. Hooray! It was a slow and tedious process, but I've done all that I believe is possible. A couple places now sport small yellow spots, but the paint will camouflage that. (We were planning to paint as part of the door project - once EVERYTHING was done - but didn't want to just paint over the tar bumps.)

I also discovered late in the game that a toothbrush was much more effective than a sponge, which could have saved some thumb strain. But the effort was well worth it.

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