Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Stripping woodwork, or the love affair I am currently having with my heat gun

Ooooh, heat gun, I like it when you get SO hot for me. (*of course not so hot as to create lead paint fumes....safety first!) Your blowy hotness makes that paint bubble so good, oh so good.

Maybe I am releasing lead paint fumes, and they've gone to my head. :)

I have been a paint stripping fool over the past few weekends. Which made for an interesting Thanksgiving, because we had a housefull of people and I felt compelled to explain to each and every one of them why our bathroom door looks like it's been sunburned and is now peeling. Why our kitchen trim is in various stages of undress (using it to test times/amounts of heat, etc.). Why there is a respirator rather than a centerpiece on our dining room table (I did move it before we all sat down to eat.)

No pictures--sorry, but when I'm stripping paint I become very focused. And later, when I'm not so focused, I want to stay as far away from my current project as possible. Tough to do when your current project is also the only room in the house in which you can bathe. But trust me, I'm bathing--I'm just trying not to look at the door when I'm in there.

3 comments:

Christina said...

Yep! What a huge difference the heat gun makes! For the first 3 years of the project, I used plain old stripper. I'm contemplating tackling a buffet. We'll see. The heat gun is definitely one of my top 5 tools.

Anonymous said...

I'm facing a huge stripping project. The woodwork in our old house needs attention badly. Some of it has been painted, most of it just needs to be stripped and refinished. Does a heat gun work for stripping old varnish and stain?

Anonymous said...

infra red heat stripper is the way to go for large areas