If you remember, last week I had the random hankering to get my months old fireplace mantle project started, so I picked up a jug of paint stripper from Home Depot after work and gave it a shot…
Wanna know how it turned out? (and again sorry for the terribly blurry pictures…)
some progress...
Not so well, as you can see…
i can see white paint!
Not so good, huh? I used a product called Citristrip. Here’s what I ran into:
- Nowhere on the bottle did it say to glop it on thickly: 1/8″ at least, according to the website (which I checked the next day).
- The places where I put on a thinner layer dried up by the time I got around to scraping it ~ 18 hours later the following evening it was all dried up.
- The places that were still scrape-able made an awful mess and barely got 2-3 layers of paint (and there are probably 15 layers on this mantle).
- Although it said it had a “pleasant citrus scent”, it stunk to high heaven for at least four days like citrus masking chemicals. I definitely had the well windows open with a fan blowing the odor out!
making a little scraping progress
I guess the lesson learned is to not apply it at 10PM and expect it to be wet the next night! – it needs eyes on it until prime scrape-ability.
Anyway, my co-worker who previously recommended Peel Away 7 and sparked my motivation to do this mantle brought in a leftover tub of it to work for me yesterday. Isn’t that nice?!
He told me it was an odor-less, highly effective, and easy-to-clean-up paint stripper. The unique thing about this product is that it comes with sheets of a fibrous paper (kind of like parchment paper) that you cover the goop with and then peel and scrape off so it all sticks to the paper for quick clean-up.
round 2 of paint stripping!
There was only enough left in the tub for me to do one half of the mantle, but I think it is a good test to see if I’m willing to buy the $68 mack-daddy gallon of it at Home Depot for this and future projects.
So I painted it on (1/8-1/4″ is what was recommended)…
goopy!
And covered it with the special paper…
just like decoupage!
…making sure to get all the air bubbles out and all painted areas covered…
in all the nooks and crannies
And it seriously had no odor. How is that possible?! Brilliant!
I’ll be sure to let you know how this attempt goes!
Have you ever tried to strip a gazillion layers of paint off of wood? Any recommended products?
{I have not been compensated to write about either paint stripper, just trying to share my experiences!}
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
I swear by SoyGel. It is great stuff and can be safely used indoors. It is a gel that you coat on and then 30 minutes later – all the layers and layers of paint are sucked up into the gel. All you do is scrape. I like it because it is safe to use on old lead paint.
I have no advice, but just wanted to offer some encouragement! I hope this next technique works better!
Can’t wait to see the end result!
god bless you and good luck!! Can’t wait to see how it turns out. PS Your Halloween party looked fabulous!!
2 words: Heat gun. I love it, and its made quick work of stripping a dresser.
Very early in my reno, I did a “strip off” on my blog. Peel Away is really great for smooth surfaces (doesn’t work as well on detail areas). It doesn’t have an odor, isn’t a fire hazard and is easy for a novice to use. The only problem is that its expensive.
No stink, how could that be. I can’t wait to see the results.
How did it go?
Thanks for all your encouragement! The most recent round got about half the paint off…post to come tonight, and hopefully a stop at Home Depot to get a full tub of the goop so I can wrap up this project!!!
It looks like you’ve made some progress. I hope by now its all come off for you
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