Ethel has, for some time, been wanting a big honkin' three (or more) tiered Mexican fountain.

(They're called "three tiered" because, when the Mexican husband has to pay for the fountain, that's how many tears he cries).

I wasn't about to shell out two (or even three?) thousand dollars for a new three-tiered fountain, so Ethel got cheap smart and went on Craigslist and found us a 5'6" three-tiered fountain for $100. I was all in favor of that.

She and Silas went to pick it up, somewhere in Gilbert or Mesa or southwestern New Mexico, and when they brought it home, it was easy to see why it was only a hundred bucks. For one thing, it no longer had a working pump; the man who sold it had bought a house with the fountain on the property, and had never used it; it hadn't worked in years.

However, whoever HAD used it before he bought it had a painting problem. This thing had more coats of paint than I have ex-wives, and when we tried to strip them off, the coats of paint turned out to be just a stubborn as said ex-wives ever were.

It was sort of like the old "Ring Around The Collar" ads - "you've tried soaking them out, and scrubbing them out, and you still come out with RING AROUND THE COLLAR!"

We tried straight paint remover, and some fancy stuff that Lowes sold us, and SandBlaster sandpaper in a hand sander - NOTHING worked.

The pieces started out looking like this
                        

...and after hours of stripping and sanding, we managed to get this one piece to the point where it looked like this:

                        

At this point, we still couldn't tell what the original color was. There are several different shades and layers of paint showing through above, and I don't know that we ever got down to the original concrete ANYWHERE.

This wouldn't be an issue, had Ethel not already spent half of the price of the fountain on a gallon of Semi-Transparent Concrete Stain in "Vaquero Brown". And we weren't sure just what sort of look we'd get with Vaquero Brown stained over, say, Kelly Green.

But we eventually gave up on trying to get down to the concrete, so before we gave up on using that stain, Ethel said "I wonder what it would look like if I stained over the paint?" Since I couldn't come up with any way that staining over the paint could ruin the fountain any more than painting over the paint would do so, I was all for it.

It turned out to be just the effect that Ethel was looking for:

                                             

...a sort of mottled-finish that looks like it's already in need of painting again.(yes, I know - this is the same sort of thinking that goes along with pre-faded jeans or pre-rusted Subarus; the nice thing about this particular case is that the new stain will last as long as new stain should last, even if it does look ilke it's already old).

I might point out here that, up until this point, this project had been moving along with the speed of most of Ethel's projects - i.e., whenever she would run out of BonBons and she'd start getting bedsores from sitting on the couch, she'd get off of her patushka and take another stab at stripping a piece of fountain. However, once she found out that she didn't have to keep stripping the fountain, suddenly it was Katy-Bar-the-Door, every man for himself, and look out below!...suddenly Silas and the dogs and I suddenly found ourselves scrubbing and toting and getting all of the pieces of the fountain ready to put together.


                      

Then, once everything was stained, came the Hard Part: putting the fountain together.

Now, please, let me be very specific here; stacking the pieces of fountain on top of each other was no big deal at all. A bit of sweat, yes, but it could be done in five minutes or so.

But stacking the fountain in such a way that the terraces were level - so that water would stream off of all sides evenly - well, that was well-nigh impossible. Especially since we all had to be there; in order to pick up a piece of the fountain and put it on top of the others - while running the plastic tube up through the middle of each piece, so that the water would stream up to the top - all three Pucketts had to be there. And, since all of us were there, all three of us would also try to level off the piece that we'd just placed. At the same time. In different directions. Without asking each other.

It was a "Serenity Prayer" kind of day.

But, eventually, we got all of it up there; as it turned out, by the time we got all of the upper pieces level enough to have consistent streaming, the big bottom tier went cattywompus on us; but, since that piece doesn't matter as far as water flow goes, I decided that that would just add to the whole "faded jeans/rusted Subaru" appeal (it was either leave it as it was, or take the thing apart again) and we wound up with this lovely piece of desert water feature:

                                          

...to my way of thinking, not too shabby, since (by the time we were done) he had spent something around 10% of the cost of buying this same fountain new.

Those of you familiar with these sorts of fountains might have noticed something missing: mostly, when you see a fountain of this size, it will have a pool at the bottom, into which the lowest tier can drain out for a final waterfall effect. We considered that for quite some time, and then realized that we have a Labrador Retriever. To put ANY water of ANY volume within reach of our Black Lab is to beg for a pump clogged with thick, black hair. The pump runs on the inside; this would mean that we'd be taking the fountain apart every day or two, right up until we either gave up on the fountain or took the Black Lab to the pound. So we're leaving it like this, at least until Silas moves out and takes Kia with him :)