Hydraulic Builder’s Lime: For about $50, you can fill two Depot buckets and use anytime you want to experiment with pointing mortar into your bricks, stone foundation, or even make your own plaster. NHL 3.5 is best for making mortar, and NHL 2.0 for rendering a plaster coat onto your basement interior walls, once the paint is off! Bring your own bucket for Masons Sand in the yard for $2.50 each. Ratios will be described per usage in upcoming DIY tutorials. This is not cement. This will breathe and wick moisture away from home, as was intended a century ago. Buy bags of black, dark buff, & red pigment to play with any color combinations (Oxide). Also buy a bag of Silica fine sand to keep your common brick mortar lily-white, or mixing for wall-plaster/render interior ($12). The primary reason why you see half the porch bricks in Chicago spalling & crumbling is because cement was used…not Lime! Tradesmen not only do not know the difference, they do not WANT to know the difference. (wear a mask and gloves when transferring to buckets in your alley. It’s a mild irritant, and make your fingerprints scratchy)

Easy-exit off Kennedy on Belmont! *it’s the only supplier in all Chicagoland…

**adding a little of this to water will make basement floors smell fresh and sanitary.

Stortz Pull Shaves: Philly-made for almost 200 years, these are not only the best tools you’ve never heard of, but also the safest for the wood you are removing paint from. Wooden handle ensures your fingers won’t get hot from steel, or plastic won’t melt under heavy use with a heat gun or Cobra (infrared) removal tools.

Go to your local Ace and grab a simple 10-buck diamond file to keep them sharp over the years…Cheap! https://www.acehardware.com/departments/tools/hand-tools/files/21283

Cobra: For about $500 you can get the industry-standard enlightened Pro’s use to quickly remove all layers of paint when used with Stortz pull-scrapers. Don’t go by the tutorial videos they’re showing, that’s a couple layers of feeble latex paint. It will be a bit more effort to take off 100. years of oil paint. But, the heat does not vaporize Lead, which is very important since none is going into your lungs, but rather coming off in taffy chunks, and when cooled, brittle -which can be safely swept into the trash bin. The metal fence is a heat shield that keeps the heat away from other important elements like say…glass!

Down & dirty, and cheap too. Consider this disposable, and you will get hundreds of hours of use- comes with 2 settings, hi/low. No need for fancy dials and buttons to inflate the price like the costly ones. We like cheap! Cheap is good. Well, to a point. Wagner is also good. Generic no-names, not so good. Where the Cobra is not needed for pin-point accuracy, this will do fine. If you must make a heat shield, wrap foil around your bench, easel, or glass.

Down & dirty, and cheap too. Consider this disposable, and you will get hundreds of hours of use- comes with 2 settings, hi/low. No need for fancy dials and buttons to inflate the price like the costly ones. We like cheap! Cheap is good. Well, to a point. Wagner is also good. Generic no-names, not so good. Where the Cobra is not needed for pin-point accuracy, this will do fine. If you must make a heat shield, wrap foil around your bench, easel, or glass.

Ball Wide-Mouth Quart Jars: You cannot beat the price for keeping materials ready-at-the-go, and sealed from air. Easily markable, you can keep Shellac, paint, primer, Linseed, thinner, and you name it contained safely. If you’re cheap & wanna reuse- just boil in crock pot and scotchbrite clean as you can. Easily paint out of with up to 2.5″ brush.

BLO: Perhaps the most essential ingredient for any DIY’r when reconditioning old wood. The primary quality which flax-oil affords, is only curing by taking oxygen from the air. This makes Linseed unique among the drying oils. The valuable liquids and oils you apply to wood in the form of paint, oil primer, or shellac (alcohol) – will stay in the coating, and not get lost into the wood grain suction. That is the whole ballgame with Linseed. The million other uses Grandpa had for Boiled Linseed Oil are an afterthought: rake-handles, flower boxes, and his birdhouses – all cheated death with an occasional brushing of Linseed. *Hand in glove with Linseed Oil, is Gum Turpentine. This is a must, and a 50/50 mix should be ready to coat bare wood. Turp allows for the Linseed to penetrate deeper into the pores.
https://www.menards.com/main/paint/solvents-cleaners-removers/thinners-solvents/sunnyside-reg-pure-gum-spirits-of-turpentine/87032/p-1444444212008-c-19345.htm

Shellac.net: The ultimate go-to for incredibly beautiful Shellac ingredient. My favorite is the Dark Jethwa in buttons. Flakes are usually de-waxed but this applies very even with no brush marks, and resists liquids pretty well. At any time it can be buffed up with fine paper (500 or more) and a refresher coat applied. For bare wood it usually takes 5 applications for the amber tones to really sing. 1# purchase, will give you 4 Ball jars of varnish. 1/4# per jar. Place in dry blender, and mulch on/off gently until dust and smaller pieces, then add to Denatured in the Ball jar and shake like a martini periodically through the day. Strain to fresh jar, and ready to go.

Tow & Holden Air Mortar Chisel – So unfair it’s like cheating. Blast through your brick’s mortar quick and precise, with no damage to brick, nor your lungs. Unlike savage grinders billowing silicosis into your neighbor’s bedrooms – this gentile workflow allows all that sand and lime to fall below. Even easier after soaking the walls. One of those stand-up compressors is required to push the chisel, usually about 125psi will do you.

E&J Shipmate Oil Sash Brush 1″ – It’s getting harder and harder to locate a great sash brush these days. This is one to grab wherever you can, in 1 inch only. No other size will do. Online is most likely bet since even ma & pa stores are ditching products we need for oil. The popular brand at the popular big-box store or Cheapo Depot is about useless. Stay away!