Refinishing- How to strip off old paint

Continuing in the current trend on this blog of pushing everybody’s race buttons as a means to celebrate the 4^th of July, the Mrs and I started a project on the 3^rd and continued on the 4^th that set out to obliterate the self image of a young African American girl in our neighborhood.

No, not really.  Well, kinda, but we didn’t do anything wrong.

We did, several months ago, find a dresser piece abandoned on the side of the road in our neighborhood.  We took a quick look, and discovering it to be mostly solid wood, decided to take it home for refinishing.

What made it unique is that a woman we can only assume is named Deidre Hicks, based on the label inside, had decoupaged the entire surface of the thing with cutouts of African-American women from fashion magazines.  But Miss Deidre obviously no longer wanted to hold on to it, so we don’t feel particularly bad about scraping it all off.  Not that it wasn’t beautiful in its own personally significant way, but I’m not sure how we’d design a room around it.

Anyways, the biggest hurdle in the refinishing process is getting the old stuff off.

First, remove all the hardware.  There’s no reason to make the job harder for yourself by having to work around tiny pieces. 

Second, remove all the doors and drawers.  Again, the more you can eliminate the joints and crevasses where paint is inclined to be un-removable, the better.  Its easier to put it back together than to dig out all those tiny bits.

Third, apply a coat of chemical stripper with a paintbrush.  In our experience, the best practice here is to only tackle two 2’x2’ areas at a time.  Apply stripper to the first area and then let it sit while applying it to the second.  Go back to the first and it should be ready for the first scraping. It'll get all bubbly like a toxic apple pie when it's ready.

Sidenote:  I’m not a fan of safety but I can agree that rubber gloves are helpful here for the average user.  There’s a slight burn if you get it on your skin.  I would recommend the thin medical rubber gloves though.  You are going to be applying in small doses and doing a lot of scraping, so cumbersome dishwashing type rubber gloves get in the way.  None of the pictures shown illustrate the usage of rubber gloves because I'm really macho... when I'm doing a refinishing/decorating project.

Fourth, using a plastic or metal scraper, apply pressure to the bubbly mass of paint.  One long continuous motion is usually the best to get the whole way down to the wood, or as far as you can get in one stripping.  If the paint on the piece is especially soft, you may find that you can simply wipe it off with a rag.  Good on you.  It definitely keeps you from gouging the wood with a scraper, which you otherwise should wield with caution.

Fifth, repeat as necessary.  Then repeat again.  And again.  And again.  Until you get to this:

 

LOOK! Pretty solid oak.  Well, mostly solid.

In our case, we’re still debating what kind of finish we’d like this to have.  The more transparent finish you desire, the more paint you’ll need to get off of the bare wood.  Clear coats and transparent stains really require you to have every last speck of paint off, while fully opaque latex really only require that you create a smooth substrate for the new coat.

We’re leaning toward a semi-transparent stain, possibly in white or a colorful hue, which will still allow the wood grain to show through.  Although as I do the research, I might be interested in trying out some combination of  milk paint and chalkboard paint. Check out these shots:

Photo via Design Sponge

Photo via Casasugar

Failed Attempts No More

Exciting news!

1. Congrats T/C... After one failed attempt, Tim and Carolyn got a dog from the same litter!

(Although to clarify, they failed once to get a dog. Not failed once to get a dog from the same litter. That'd be a funny story though, if they accidentally picked out a dog from a litter and thought they were getting a Poobrador but ended up with a Chiuamaraner* .

2. Congrats A/K... After two failed attempts, Andy and Kim finally settled on their house!

(Although to clarify, that means they purchased one house, not failed to decide which one to buy. That wouldn't be as exciting and would actually be rather common. Its difficult to pick between house styles, especially on North 29th.)

3. Congrats D/and kind of R... After three failed attempts, I successfully determined a way to wear my dress socks pulled up with sneakers and shorts and a button down gay-cowboy-looking-shirt** that Rach picked out for me and in all honesty I kind of like.

(To clarify, three failed attempts to find a way in which it was cool. I tried left up, right down... right up, left down... and both halfway, and finally settled on both up. If I had failed thricely to pull my dress socks up, that would be embarrassing. Instead, I look awesome and my wife is very proud and will probably want to jump me right after I get off the blog.)


*That'd be a chiuaua and weimaraner mix.

**Someday I'll post a pic and you can decide if its a gay-cowboy-looking-shirt, a gay-looking-cowboy-shirt, a cowboy-shirt, or possibly just a gay-shirt. Either way, I'm fabulous... er... awesome. Damn shirt.

Its Fashion Week... (in our Dining Room Project.)

We're having kind of an odd winter. Usually the months of January, February, and March are depressing and isolating. All the folks in our social circles go into hibernation and my extrovert appetite cannot be sated. I need people to give me worth and validate my self-perceived comedic genius...

(Seriously, if you want to leave a comment saying how funny I am, I really won't mind.)

So I fully expected to be crankin' away on this Dining Room project by now. But oddly enough, our social calendar is penciled in from edge to edge. Every forseeable Tuesday and Wednesday, every Friday and Saturday in February, half the week-end-nights of March, and a couple of days in April are booked! I don't know if this "early spring" social activity is Global Warming related, but whatever, I'm not complaining. My extrovertometer is running like a pop starlet on the club circuit hopped up on Speed.*

But I guess I am a tad ashamed that we haven't gotten more done.

Just before our parking pass for downtown expired, we took one of our last days driving to pick up my boss's steamer. So, since we have to return that to him, we do have a slight fire burning under our asses to get this thing going.

So here's Rach starting to Paper Tiger the wallpaper on the ceiling and above the chair rails in our Dining Room.


That was going well, and simultaneously, I was sanding the trim work on the other side of the room. The first day of this went ok, but after showering up, I looked in the mirror and discovered I had like 5 flecks of high gloss white paint in my eye. Now, I'm no health freak and I think most people who are abundantly worried about preserving their lives should spend a little more time living. But I didn't like the idea that the inside of my eyelid was a veritable Sherwin Williams so I got some eye protection from the basement and bought a couple of masks. You never know about the whole Lead Paint thing in an old house, and I figure that I smoke enough cigars that I probably can't afford to have a layer of lead ON TOP of all that...



But there was a problem...



I was suffocating... It was impossible to breathe through that thing. I was confident a layer of lead dust and nicotine and tar would be better than this crap.



So Rach went into the adjoining Kitchen and found some linen kitchen towels that are working far better. They may not have the microdust protection but hey, its not like we have kids...

(And let's be frank, kids these days could do with a little more hazardous material exposure. When I was a kid, I played barehanded with a jar full of mercury that my dad collected from thermostats and batteries that HE found in junkyards when he was a kid. And other than my extra testicle and the deformed partial mutant bat wing growing between my shoulder blades, I'm fine. My wife thinks it all very sexy.)




And as an added benefit, being able to drink a Magic Hat Jinx beer while sanding is totally key to making an otherwise overly laborious job that much more tolerable.



And yes, I know we're going to get comments about how we're wearing burkas. But actually, I think they more closely resemble niqabs. I've found a handy breakdown of muslim veil fashions for everyone here, in case you're interested.



Footnotes:
* The House Rules is not condoning the existence of Pop Starlets.