Soap and Sunshine

Here’s an updated picture of those two Gloss Alabaster Family Arabians that came in an especially dirty box lot a while back:

Originally I was going to leave them as-is, as an “ultimate” example of grubbiness, but after nearly a year of their sad faces peering over the monitor in my office, I had to do something.

They still have a ways to go in the unyellowing process, but here’s what the other side still looks like, to give you an idea of how far they have come:

You might think that’s bad, but it’s a considerable improvement over what they originally looked like before they even hit the bathtub:

They were literally so grimy you could not even tell they were Gloss! The grime was so thick in spots that it actually came off in chunks, which kind of freaked me out a little bit at first. Was something else coming off as well?

Nope, just years of neglect.

And it really didn’t take much serious effort, beyond a little soap, sunshine, and patience. (No actual bleach in this case: it tends to do more harm than good on Gloss Finishes.)

In the weeks that they’ve resided in my bedroom window, I’ve kind of gotten attached to these two; they were slated for my sales list after rehab, but right now it’s 50-50 on whether or not they’ll stay.

I already have a really nice Gloss Mare, and several superlative Gloss Foals (because of my obsession with tracking ear/mold variations on the Foal mold), so I shouldn’t. Since Family Arabians have been trending up of late – especially now, with a Family Arabian Stallion in the Vintage Club lineup this year – finding them a new home shouldn’t be hard.