Sure, because it's your FOREVER home.
Other than it being a thousand degrees out today, this was a quick, easy, and very satisfying project. The grave markers for my mother-in-law's brother and father needed to be raised, leveled, and restored. I had been meaning to get this done since we buried her and just never made time to do it. All said, the actual time spent cleaning and restoring the markers was about three hours.
You can see here Ricky's marker was really dirty and had organics growing on it that darkened the stone. Junior's marker was significantly corroded.
I can do the restoration work on-site, but I had to remove the markers for raising and leveling anyway. It was super hot out and there was a threat of rain, so my air-conditioned garage sounded appealing. Unsurprisingly, grave markers are F'in heavy.
This is a great product to use on stone. It cleans it super fast and contains bleach to kill all the organic matter.
See ... the marker looked pretty good after cleaning, but the deep V-cut lettering is only darker because of shadow and dirt. The goal is to make it really pronounced by painting.
To paint the lettering, I used a generations-old technique. Yes, that is a jar of molasses. The molasses prevents the paint from adhering to the stone, and when the paint dries, the molasses does not. After the paint dries, I just cleaned it off with water and a grill stone.
With Junior's marker, I started by using a drill-mounted stripper wheel to remove the heavy corrosion and do a rough polish. I then used a dark bronze enamel to paint the entire marker and a rag soaked with mineral spirits to clean the enamel off the areas I wanted to shine through. I baked it in the sun for a bit before using sandpaper to finish polishing the lettering and clear coated it.
Time to head back to the cemetery. I used sand to raise and level the markers and then evened out the area around the markers with topsoil.
(That's not a stain on the granite marker; It got dirty during installation and I need to go back with a brush and clean it again)
Other than it being a thousand degrees out today, this was a quick, easy, and very satisfying project. The grave markers for my mother-in-law's brother and father needed to be raised, leveled, and restored. I had been meaning to get this done since we buried her and just never made time to do it. All said, the actual time spent cleaning and restoring the markers was about three hours.
You can see here Ricky's marker was really dirty and had organics growing on it that darkened the stone. Junior's marker was significantly corroded.
I can do the restoration work on-site, but I had to remove the markers for raising and leveling anyway. It was super hot out and there was a threat of rain, so my air-conditioned garage sounded appealing. Unsurprisingly, grave markers are F'in heavy.
This is a great product to use on stone. It cleans it super fast and contains bleach to kill all the organic matter.
See ... the marker looked pretty good after cleaning, but the deep V-cut lettering is only darker because of shadow and dirt. The goal is to make it really pronounced by painting.
To paint the lettering, I used a generations-old technique. Yes, that is a jar of molasses. The molasses prevents the paint from adhering to the stone, and when the paint dries, the molasses does not. After the paint dries, I just cleaned it off with water and a grill stone.
With Junior's marker, I started by using a drill-mounted stripper wheel to remove the heavy corrosion and do a rough polish. I then used a dark bronze enamel to paint the entire marker and a rag soaked with mineral spirits to clean the enamel off the areas I wanted to shine through. I baked it in the sun for a bit before using sandpaper to finish polishing the lettering and clear coated it.
Time to head back to the cemetery. I used sand to raise and level the markers and then evened out the area around the markers with topsoil.
(That's not a stain on the granite marker; It got dirty during installation and I need to go back with a brush and clean it again)
