Paint or strip?

22 January 2023, 10:53 AM

RealPlayer

Paint or strip?

We’re going to paint the foyer, which is painted wood below, painted plaster above. But the fireplace surround has all this nice detail that would be much nicer in natural wood (echoing the staircase opposite). A chipped piece of paint shows it’s only one layer of paint. What would you do? (I’ve never attempted stripping wood.)

22 January 2023, 11:01 AM

Mikhailoh

Stripping will be a lot of work with that recessed detail, but your only real option if you want the wood finish.

22 January 2023, 11:02 AM

big al

How much work do you want to do?

Striping paint to get back to natural wood is a pretty big task, especially if the wooden piece has a lot of intricate detail. On the other hand, I like the look of natural wood better for much trim work and furniture. I once stripped paint off a side board that I bought at a thrift shop. I had carefully scraped a chip of paint off it before I bought it and determined that it was mahogany. Being furniture, I was able to use chemical strippers on it outdoors.

That could be an issue with trying to strip your fireplace surround. If it can be removed and taken to a furniture stripper, that could be the easiest course of action.

Big Al

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22 January 2023, 12:17 PM

Steve Miller

What some pro restorers do is remove the trim and send it out to a place that strips it in a tank. If you don’t have much to do this may be an option. Otherwise you have three choices - replacement, heat or chemical strippers.

Replacement entails finding new pieces similar to what you have and use them to replace the painted stuff. There are companies that will custom make any molding you like but they’re not cheap.

If the trim was painted prior to 1978 the paint almost certainly lead in it and you won’t want to use heat. If you’re not sure if the paint has lead in it you can buy kits at Home Depot to test it. Heating (heat gun) is slower than chemical stripping but not nearly the mess.

That leaves chemicals. There is a new class of paint strippers that aren’t nearly as noxious as the old ones were - Citrustrip being one. It will work but the process is slow and messy - especially details. I’d try it out in a corner or something to see how well it works. You can always paint over it.

22 January 2023, 01:33 PM

QuirtEvans

Waiting for Doug to enter this thread ...

22 January 2023, 02:25 PM

Nina

quote:
That leaves chemicals. There is a new class of paint strippers that aren’t nearly as noxious as the old ones were - Citrustrip being one. It will work but the process is slow and messy - especially details. I’d try it out in a corner or something to see how well it works. You can always paint over it.

This seems like a project to do in the summer when you can run fans and leave the windows open.

22 January 2023, 02:43 PM

Jack Frost

I stripped a lot of woodwork in my house with a heat gun. Much less messy than chemical.

J

22 January 2023, 03:05 PM

piqué

I hate, hate, hate paint stripping and have resolved to never do it again.

If it was my mantel and I wanted it to go back to the bare wood, I would remove the mantel from the wall and send it out to a company that will tank strip it and clean it well after. Then I would put it on sawhorses and stain it myself (I have a lot of experience doing that). If you haven't done much staining and refinishing, I would also have that done for you and then have it rehung.

There is no way I would try to strip that myself, in the house, hanging on the wall. Nope.

22 January 2023, 03:25 PM

Steve Miller

You can also have your (spectacular!) fireplace surround painted/grained to match your other wood.

If you find the right craftsman you won’t be able to tell the natural wood from the painted parts. Those guys are becoming rare, but they’re out there.

Moving companies usually know where to find them.

22 January 2023, 06:15 PM

RealPlayer

Thanks, everyone, for the tips and cautions. Sounds to me like sending it out is the way to go but I have to price it out…and see who even does this. I naively thought that stripping would be easy if it’s just one paint coat.

For fun, here is the fireplace (potentially a working one) in the living room, where the piano lives. The fireplace was covered over, but we knew it was there. Also there was no surround. It was a blank wall. We had it opened up, and bought the mantelpiece from an antiques dealer. (This was 40 years ago.). That, and the piano, really make the room.

22 January 2023, 06:57 PM

Steve Miller

Beautiful!

22 January 2023, 07:28 PM

CHAS

Seems worthwhile however you do it.

23 January 2023, 10:16 AM

big al

Be wary of reactivating old fireplaces. They generally don't have flue liners and the brick and mortar often has deteriorated. There's a real risk of fire or smoke infiltrating the spaces around the fireplace and chimney.

Big Al

23 January 2023, 11:07 AM

Lisa

You could do it yourself - there's not that much of it, not that many coats, and not that much detail.

I spent about a year stripping lead paint from my last house using Peel Away, one of the options listed in this article. It was effective but noxious - it was lye based and it would burn you pretty good if you weren't careful. If you don't have like 15 layers of paint, it's probably more than you need.

And if it's latex paint, it might blister right off nicely with a heat gun, as Jack suggested.

You will need a good set of detail picks (you can get small scrapers or even a set of dental picks on Amazon) to get the paint out of the carved parts. But I really don't think it would be that hard. And it's kind of oddly satisfying. There's nothing like scraping a big blob of liquified paint off and revealing the wood underneath.

See this article for instructions: https://www.thisoldhouse.com/w...trip-paint-from-wood

Personally, I'd try it myself and if it turned out to be too much of a pain or not coming out the way I want, I'd then send it out to a dip strip place. (That's the term you want to search for - "dip stripping." We did send our doors out to the dip stripper because it was easier than doing them ourselves and at the time it cost like $75 each which was a bargain for the time it saved us.)