How do you paint something 314 feet tall? The same way you might paint a house.
Water blasting, applying primer and paint are the three key steps, according to the owner of Newport’s Baynum Painting Chris Baynum. His company has painted Kings Island’s Eiffel Tower two other times and the Eiffel Tower at its sister park Kings Dominion three times.
Baynum employees, led by three generations of the Hopkins family over 33 years, showed up at 8 a.m. Aug. 15. “And before I left at nine there were pressure washers up on the top deck working, so in an hour’s time he’s (Walker Hopkins Jr.) got 10 guys positioned and they hit the ground running.”
The pressure washing is high power, five times as strong as a car wash. Baynum calls it “really aggressive water blasting.”
The priming is no joke either. Seventy percent of the tower must be done before workers spray 1,500 gallons of “Eiffel Tower Green” on the structure. Baynum says Kings Island considered changing the color but stuck with what was on there before.
He considers the KI job an easy one compared to some of the other projects Baynum as tackled around the world. The Newport company is internationally known and is preparing to paint at an amusement park in Brazil.
