Hey, you strippers!
Got your attention? Good. :)
I have a question for all the house bloggers out there about paint strippers. I have four sides of four doors and three doorways to strip paint from.
The paint looks like this:
There is actually two layers--a weird-o salmon puke and the yellow. The paint is shiny and I don't know what kind it is. It's almost like lacquer paint instead of paint, if that helps any.
I am not sure why these doors were painted and no other woodwork in the house was touched. It is only in one room, and it's been there for at least 50 years, or whenever they put on the kitchen/bathroom/laundry room addition, because when they put on the addition, they moved the real side door to the back (in the kitchen) and it's painted as well. If that makes any sense.
I don't want to spend a lot of money for the little amount of paint stripping I have to do here, but I'm also not sure what the best product would be to buy. I would like to use something that will not make me ill while working, too. Does that soy stuff really work? Or is it citrus stuff?
As you can see, there aren't really any carvings or whatever to worry about. It's pretty plain.
Underneath, where the paint has flaked off the dining room door (the one on the left in the picture above) over the years, the door is stained or whatever you call that. Is there a way to strip the paint off without harming the stain/whatever underneath?
Thanks to anyone who replies--I am rather clueless about all of this. :)
I have a question for all the house bloggers out there about paint strippers. I have four sides of four doors and three doorways to strip paint from.
The paint looks like this:
There is actually two layers--a weird-o salmon puke and the yellow. The paint is shiny and I don't know what kind it is. It's almost like lacquer paint instead of paint, if that helps any.
I am not sure why these doors were painted and no other woodwork in the house was touched. It is only in one room, and it's been there for at least 50 years, or whenever they put on the kitchen/bathroom/laundry room addition, because when they put on the addition, they moved the real side door to the back (in the kitchen) and it's painted as well. If that makes any sense.I don't want to spend a lot of money for the little amount of paint stripping I have to do here, but I'm also not sure what the best product would be to buy. I would like to use something that will not make me ill while working, too. Does that soy stuff really work? Or is it citrus stuff?
As you can see, there aren't really any carvings or whatever to worry about. It's pretty plain.
Underneath, where the paint has flaked off the dining room door (the one on the left in the picture above) over the years, the door is stained or whatever you call that. Is there a way to strip the paint off without harming the stain/whatever underneath?
Thanks to anyone who replies--I am rather clueless about all of this. :)
posted by Jennifer at 12:35 PM
4 Comments:
Sounds like you do not want to repaint the doors, but just stain & finish the wood when you are done (?). If they are older doors, you will probably want to assume the paint has lead in it and take precuations (I wear a lead fumes respirator and work outside when possible). If you have kids you will need to be more careful. I'd personally use a heat gun on the doors to remove the bulk of the paint. Then I'd use a strong chemical stripper to remove the remaining paint. I am not a fan of soy or citrus because they take so long - not a good thing with lead paint. I've got many half used cans in my basement. I use something like Zip-Strip with good ventilation. It works very fast and you can dispose of the paint fast. You wil lose the underlying finish and probably a lot of the stain when you strip. The good news is that is fairly easy to replace. You are lucky that there is a finish underneath the paint - it makes stripping a lot easier :-) I have a abthroom door that I will be stripping of 80 yrs worth of paint soon - we may be working on our door projects at the same time. Good luck!!
I'm a big fan of Soy-Gel and Citristrip. Yes, it takes a while, but you can do other things (like go to work or sleep) while the gel is working. For me, I've found that the best approach is to lay the whatever-it-is you're stripping horizontally and apply a decent amount of the stripping gel. Wait. Regardless of what the instructions say, overnight is best. Even if you can remove the paint sooner, it's much less messy if you let is sit for at least 8 hours. Then, just use a plastec scraper to remove it.
If odor is a concern, go with Soy-gel. It hardly smells at all, and it's a little thicker and easier to work with than Citristrip.
Good luck!
we also try to work outside to avoid the fumes and lead particles. The answer to your question depends on how many layers of paint. If it's only a few, then I'd use a chemical stripper like Strypeeze. I have never tried Soy Gel and I actually find I enjoy the buzz from the fumes (sick I know). If there are many layers of paint, then I'd recommend renting a Silent Paint Remover if you can or using a heat gun to get the bulk of the layers off and then cleaning it up with stripper and steel wool. You'll need denatured alcohol to do the final cleanup and probably need to sand with 100 grit to smooth it out.
I use 2 scrapers when I'm scraping the paint off. One to scrape the paint off and one to scrape the paint off the other scraper- it tends to gum up a bit. I use a large coffee can to put the scrapings in.
I've tried CitriStrip and it wasn't strong enough for my jobs but I haven't tried Soy Gel. Good luck!
another thing you can do with soy-gel if you're worried about it drying up or getting averywhere is put some plastic over it while it's sitting. I've done this where there were multiple layers of paint, and it worked pretty well. But it's really about weather you want to wait or not. Soy-gel is slower, but I really don't like breathing fumes/dealing with caustic chemicals, so it's a fair trade off for me. And it's kind of expensive.
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