Six of us GG Yorkies met Geraldine at Gale Farm Court on a sunny and blustery Wednesday morning to help improve some of their benches. They want them stripped of paint and re-stained so that plaques can go on them to commemorate friends that have passed. The benches are used by the residents throughout the warmer months to enjoy the fresh air and remember their friends.

Dressed up in the protective white overalls and latex gloves provided we set to work. However, the first bench we tackled seemed resistant to the paint stripper (or maybe we were just too impatient to give it time to work) as it didn't seem to be doing much. Jenna kindly dashed to a local shop to buy some paint scrapers as Geraldine had been told that scrapers and sandpaper wouldn't be needed (she was told the paint would just wipe off) but without them we couldn't do much. We soon started scraping and picking away at the paint - some of which came off in satisfyingly large pieces - which Vicky particularly enjoyed:

I don't have any patience for stripping - Vicky

The paint stripper was working in some places (but not all) as we could actually see the paint starting to bubble up. After a good hour or so we had scraped a lot of the paint off the first bench and wiped it down. The second bench we scraped where we could but it will need an application of paint stripper as well at a later date as we used almost the whole bottle on the first bench. There is a third bench round the other side of the building that needs doing as well. We put a "do not sit on this bench" sign on the first bench so that no-one uses it and gets any remnants of paint stripper on their clothes. It would be great to go back to finish the job sometime soon as it would be lovely to see the benches all finished. Geraldine will get more tools and sandpaper, etc if we are able to return.

After tidying up we made our way down to a local café for a well-earned drink and a bite to eat. Five of us had met at the bottom of one of the few hills in York not too far away for a few hill reps before heading to this mission, so were ready for some refreshments.