stripping a marble fireplace
Well my wife nagging me I finally got started . I bought a heat gun at harbor Freight and started stipping. It was going slow and as you can see there is a layer of brown paint or stain at the bottom and had asked some friends on a truck forum i belong to and…
Well my wife nagging me I finally got started . I bought a heat gun at harbor Freight and started stipping. It was going slow and as you can see there is a layer of brown paint or stain at the bottom and had asked some friends on a truck forum i belong to and they suggested i google stripping marble and low and behold I found this site. I learned alot by just reading so soon I will be buying some chemicals and doing it that way. Im also going to invest in a blue tarp and a couple of regular canvas tarps to put below a couple of layers of newspapers to protect the laminate wood floor underneath the fire/mantle piece. ill keep updating this with my progress as time allows
I also started with a heat gun and a small part of it worked and I got really excited, but it got harder and harder after that and some of the paint didn’t budge.
So I turned to Peelaway 6, which was great. But it did take a couple of applications. Ths smell of the stuff ain’t to bad, but windows open is recommended.
After I got most of the paint off I learned that a lot of the marble on the inside, ie not the actual posts or top was cracked, so I’m going to get some tile and cover them up and make it look a bit better.
I’ll try and get a picture up when I’m done.
Tip: cover up your floors when using chemicals, when you think you’ve covered enough, cover again. That stuff gets through…
Try to scrape as many layers as you can with the scraper before you start with chemicals. Don’t need the heat gun.
Start on the side that is least visible. Get hevy-duty rubber gloves, lots of rags and razor blade scraper. Don’t know what kind of chemical you going to use, Rock Miracle worked well for me. You might want to try PEELAWAY #7 for higly detaild areas like the key stone in the center. The residue from the striper can be removed with mineral spirits and fine grade steel wool. make shure you have good ventilation. Definately cover your floors with thin cardboard and masking tape. After you are done stripping the paint you need to repolish. Good luck !
It is a lot of work! The heat gun didn’t work for me because I think the stone acts as a heat dump and prevents the paint from getting hot enough. The challenge with chemicals (which I used) is having the right tools to get in all the crevises, etc. Be careful with lead paint and always scrape when wet, never dry.
Chemicals are the only way to go for this job, i have seen some amazing restorations of stone mantles using them, good luck.