The Paint Job - Part 3

So at this point I have the entire bottom half of the trim removed.  But before painting, there is a lot of cleanup to do this time.  The keder rails are an absolute mess.

I used a putty knife to scrape off most of it, but the remaining residue needed to be taken off using a strong solvent -- in this case, xylene.  It reduced the butyl tape down to something resembling used chewing gum on a warm day, so physically scraping off as much as possible first is key.  Once cleaned up, I applied a new strip of butyl tape to the rails by cutting the tape lengthways (3/4 inch wide is too much).

Most of the butyl tape stuck to the keder rails but the trim did not go unscathed; I also scraped off what I could using a putty knife.

Since xylene would reduce plastic into a gelatinous mess, I had to resort to using citrus-based degreaser/label remover to get the last of the crud off.  It worked, but required a lot of hard rubbing.  I worked the sections between holes one at a time until it was clean enough to paint.

All told this is about 3-4 hours of work just to get the butyl tape off everything and get the trim cleaned up. I seriously reconsidered taking this project on at this point because I knew the top trim was even longer and was not looking forward to it.  But, once I got the trim back on, it started to be worth it again.  I'm about halfway done at this point.

Oh, and never leave butyl tape lying around on the ground. This is never coming off.