This morning and yesterday were spent on repairing the broken wall and repainting the street sign for our Loke after the delivery lorry with our I-Beams had misjudged things and knocked into the curved brick wall at the entrance of our Loke on the main road.
Yesterday, we managed to pick up the pieces and glue them back together again using our adhesive PU foam that was specialised to glue building materials. Many bricks were still mortared together in large sections and we carefully put the jigsaw puzzle back in the correct order without having to remove any of the old mortar. The bricks were the ones where it had two large round holes instead of a frog and we slid and wiggled each layer back and stick on the top row back down.
Rebuilt-wall
The old metal street sign had also got disturbed and was in terrible state so we decided to bring that home to give it a complete revamp with fresh metal paint.
Old-loke-sign
We removed the old green vinyl coating, scrubbed and got the aluminium clean and shiny again. This then had a half a dozen thin coats of a green hammer effect metal spray paint and left to dry and cure overnight.
The new letters, “Smiths Loke” was re-created on the computer, using the British Highways standard font face and adjusted to fit along a metre length of the sign and 150mm high with a white border. The paper print out was stuck to the freshly painted metal with that special spray glue that allows the removal and refixing. Then the border and each letter was very carefully cut by following the lines using a sharp scalpel to leave “holes” where the letters were, ready for several coats of a white metal spray paint.
Repainted-sign
Once this was dry, after lunch today, we took up the new sign and positioning it very slightly higher because the old holes had many missing mortar where the plugs were. Drilling new holes and using mushroom headed stainless steel screws, the new sign was affixed back on the repaired wall.
Wall-all-refurbished
We probably will take down the twin street sign on the opposite side of the Loke and do the same thing again. This sign is starting to peel and it is done at a different time and by a different hand with poor quality letter placement so it would be good to get this sign repaired too and both become a matched pair.
Old-loke-sign-Left