Stripping paint
Week 19 – Stripping Paint
I decided that we would keep the old doors — single panel, solid wood, hard to replace — which meant that we needed to have the paint stripped off. My dad had called around, and *IF* you could find anyone who would do it, it was $100-150 per door and took two weeks or more.
I’d done this before with the “classic” strippers that all contain methylene chloride. They stink, and it’s hard to get through more than one layer of paint at a time. Dad had seen an episode of “This Old House” a couple of years earlier where they compared a variety of strippers. The one that stood out was Peel Away. I searched on the web for this then, and found an on-line supplier … in North Carolina. We ordered a couple of gallons, and tried it on one of the doors. It wasn’t bad, but it was the first time Stephen had stripped paint. We sort of figured that we wouldn’t re-strip that door. Best laid plans…
We had kept the doors flat, and covered, but water got under the covers anyways. Half of the door on the left’s paint just came off when I took the cover off (these are the narrow closet doors). It took three separate applications of a methylene chloride stripper on each side to get these doors to the point where I could sand the rest off. That was about 4 hours per side, plus another 45 minutes sanding each side.
We had some of the Peel Away left from before, so tried it out again. It goes on as a paste, using a spatula. It sort of smells like baking soda. You cover it with the paer (essentially waxed paper) and leave it for 12-24 hours. The paper adheres to the compound/paint mixture, and you just peel it off. Notice how the painted edges of the panel separated. The last photo is after a brief wash with water and a sponge. The door is basically ready to repaint right now. Total time excluding the overnight was about an hour per surface. Unfortunately, it’s not something that your local hardware store will have, but I was able to find more at the local Dunn-Edwards paint store.
I also decided to try Ready Strip, which is supposed to be a less toxic product and easy to use. Part of the premise is that you know when it’s ready to strip because the color changes. We put it on Saturday afternoon and came back Sunday mid-morning. We were working on two doors, and one appeared to have changed color more than the other. The old paint started coming off in long peels, but it appeared as if there was still at least one layer left behind. And the stuff handled like glue or tacky tape. Stephen scrubbed with a paint stripper sponge to get the rest of the stuff off the first door. The second door never really seemed to set up, so we stripped off what we could and then put some Peel Away down. Total time for one side was about 3 1/2 hours.
So, we have 6 more doors to go… we’re getting more Peel Away.
On to Week 20