Best practice for restoring wood trim before painting
We have a lot of wood trim and wainscoting (see picture) that has been buried under many years of paint. Since we don’t quite have the budget to strip it down to the wood and then repaint, which I imagine is what you’re really “supposed” to do, what’s the next best procedure for getting the wood in good enough shape to paint -and look good enough?
The more specific info the better – what methods and products would you use? Is there anything to avoid that might damage the wood? and if you know anyone who could do this project, that’d be great too!
[Wainscoting](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s3/:brownstoner:x4Vz:wainscoting.jpg.jpg)
Guest User | 4 years and 4 months ago
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hkapstein | 4 years and 4 months ago
Send a chip to the lab before you have your contractor sand that stuff. The contractor should know a lab, or you can find one online.
Guest User | 4 years and 4 months ago
We used Peel away on one area but I didn’t repeat. It was messy and sanding is cheaper and faster. I haven’t gone back and read every reply to your posy but I believe Steve (the expert) is suggesting sanding.
Guest User | 4 years and 4 months ago
By the way, I tested the older off white paint on that panel for lead and it came back negative. Might be because it was originally unpainted in the original state and people painted it years later. Other trim around some windows came back positive FYI so the test seems to be valid.
hkapstein | 4 years and 4 months ago
I apologize, I made a mistake and posted bad advice. I did not see the picture attachment to squibsie’s post, and I withdraw the suggestion to use liquid deglosser or a drywall screen. On the white section, there’s zero chance of getting a good result with a liquid deglosser. On the brown section maybe, I can’t really see it well, but if what you’re dealing with is mostly like the white section, you’re definitely going to have to do some serious work. Frankly, I would not try to paint over that, but if steve says it can be done I’m sure he’s right. Can it be done lead safe though?
I like Bob’s peel away suggestion. Perhaps some sections could be removed for offsite stripping
andriywww1990 | 4 years and 4 months ago
urbandad, i have hired a lot of people who have worked on houses of their own, usually friends who are between jobs, and these are smart people who have done a lot. the only thing they have is that i know they are capable. but they know nothing and if left alone they go down the wrong road or they tell me how they want to try this or that only because they do not know what really works and when they were working on their own house they made the mistake of listening to a babbling fool in an orange apron. they are still learning and do not know the shortest route to anywhere and in a business we have to KNOW what to do when we look at it, we can’t be fumbling around trying to figure things out that we have been doing for 20 years as we look for that “silver bullet”.
homeowners tend to think that every fix comes in a can. i have had to explain this to staff: any time you introduce an unnecessary step or product into a job you risk slowing it down and also risk some other accident occuring (in this case, spilling a can of deglosser). i have to beat this li ne of thinking into their heads until they realize there is a very proven and direct way to get something done and it generally means work. op has to sand this lightly anyway due to other issues, that is where op should leave it.
you remind me of one of those employees who know a lot but cannot focus. they are finally getting to put their hands to something and then they think of all the products they have seen on TV or read about in Fine Woodworking they spend more time telling me how we can do this and that and i end up telling them – “focus on the work and we can talk about that later over a beer”. and they go on and on with the next step in the process and i tell them “focus” and this continues until one day i tell them “i have been doing doors for 15 years, this is how we do them” and then i tell them to “shut up”. they will spend more time talking about how we could be doing it some other way and less time doing it the way we should be doing it.
others will not know what i am talking about here, but you came on here some weeks back, before your hiatus, and someone had been looking for a place to purchase molding from Garden State. the post was pulled and i have no idea why, but Garden State is a supplier of lower price pine molding (richmond hill lumber has it, riverhead carries it, metropolitan). it is the kind of molding that working class people (my family) put in their houses and if someone is looking for garden state product, we have to FOCUS on that and address that because to do otherwise might be a real slap in the face to someone who cannot afford to have custom knives made. instead of answering their question, which i was attempting to do when the post got pulled, you run on about custom knives as if you heard about custom knives for the first time last week. to do something like that to someone who is shopping for a budget product reeks of something horrible in our society. where is your head?
you remind me of one of the employees i hire who are real smart and read but are all over the place and cannot focus because they are learning so much new stuff that they had no idea existed even the day before that they want to find some “better” way to do everything i have been doing since before i went to college and as a result they cannot focus and end up spewing a lot of nonsense along the way. correct nonsense, but not necessary nonsense. it leads people down the wrong path.
stevecym | 4 years and 4 months ago
Well urbandad, glad to see you have a pair.
RobertGMarvin
in General Discussion 4 years and 4 months ago
REPAINTING, not remaining
RobertGMarvin
in General Discussion 4 years and 4 months ago
The only painted woodwork on our house was in the kitchen. Many paint coats obscured the details. When we had it painted (and skim coated) three years ago we had the wood trim roughly stripped, using a peel-away stripper which, I hope, minimized the lead danger. We didn’t need the painstaking final steps of removing all the paint from crevices, since we were remaining. After priming and painting with BM Aura semi-gloss it looked (and still looks) pretty good.
hkapstein | 4 years and 4 months ago
FWIW I recently painted an entire prewar house and it turned out pretty darn good. If you wanted to say there may be areas that need special attention, I’d agree, but cutting back the entire surface with sandpaper is definitely not what I’d do here, particularly with the lead hazard. I have no doubt steve is a better painter than I am. He knows way more about paint and has much more experience, and probably the lead levels to prove it. He sands between every coat of paint and he probably primes even painted surfaces, and he says his brushed on coatings are almost as flat as a spray finish. And on my doors that I just finished stripping, I’ll probably try my best to do as he suggested. But painting over a massive amount of installed trim and wainscotting is never gonna look perfect. The mouldings definition will be lost to paint build up, and you’ll drive youself nuts trying to sand out every imperfection. And if the underlayers are poorly adhered, all that work will be for naught anyway. Good luck sanding tiny profiles or beads on the wainscotting with a 1×4. A deglosse r will make quick work of that and you won’t have to worry about the lead.
But let me do you a favor. You have my endorsement to leave a few drips or runs that crummy 20th century painters slapped on there if they’re not too visible. Don’t kill yourself or get lead poisoning over that, it’s not going to bother you or substantially change the appearance of your home, and you can do a better job next time. Besides it’s part of the story of your house. Perhaps in the future you’ll strip it back anyway.
andriywww1990 | 4 years and 4 months ago
Urban dad does not have enough experience with jobs like this in old houses to understand what the issues are with old painted surfaces. Yes, if you want to recoat a surface that had been in oil by a pro, in a proper manner, deglosser will allow a recoat. But the issues are not necessarilly the gloss and the painted surfaces are usually poor at best, due to shoddy workmanship. The issues are simply uneven painted surfaces caused by poor application and a failure to sand between coats in the past. Deglosser will not help this; a 1×4 with a piece of 120 or 150 wrapped around it will.
Also, i would bet a lot of money what you have is mostly latex over oil. I have not used deglosser in years because i feel elbow grease is the best solution, but i have never thought of deglosser as being something for latex paint.
hkapstein | 4 years and 4 months ago
Cate, he’s not really sanding, just scuffing the surface. You could just take a sandpaper like 120 grit or maybe even 150 and run it back and forth one pass and you’d be good to prime and paint. I guess you’d have to judge if you’re if you’re liberating lead from underneath, but I’m sure people do this all the time. You could scuff a small section and than check with a test kit if you exposed any lead. It doesn’t really make a ton of dust. I think it would take a long time to do a large area wet as the sandpaper will clog every few square feet. The screen might work better, I’ve never tried using a screen wet.
Now if you really just don’t want to mess with the possibility of scratching lead paint, just use the liquid sandpaper or a similar deglosser. That may be a better choice on many parts of this job anyway. https://www.homedepot.com/p/Klean-Strip-1-qt-Liquid-Sandpaper-Cleaner-Deglosser-QWN285/100112667
Now you suggest to paint without sanding/deglossing, and this may work, but I don’t recomend it. The point of the sanding is not to even the surface in this case, except maybe in a few spots. The purpose is the prevent the new layer of paint from peeling off. If the surface is glossy, it would be like painting glass. The paint can come up and peel off in big chunks especially if disturbed. You may get lucky, or you may not, but for the limited effort, any decent painter would try to rough a gloss or semi gloss before painting over. And if you paint the whole thing this way and it does peel, there’s not much you can do at that point short of stripping. You can’t paint over a layer that’s not adhered and expect it to magically bond the paint underneath.
cate | 4 years and 4 months ago
I would be avoid sanding anything that might contain lead paint. There is a wet sanding method you can use, but you have to know how to contain the area and protect yourself. You risk spreading the lead paint dust around if you do not know what you are doing. If you don’t require a perfect result, you can paint without sanding (heaven knows I have never sanded before painting!). If you need perfect results, i would advise either hiring someone to strip the woodwork first (using lead safe methods) or hire professional painters who are trained in lead safe practices.
hkapstein | 4 years and 4 months ago
A drywall sanding screen may work faster than actual sandpaper. If you have a lot of detail, you may want to pick up a can of the liquid sandpaper. You could use sanding grips or just let them go. You really just need to scuff it up a bit, so if you have a large flat area, I’d use a bigger screen on a pole with a sanding attachment. I can’t see power tools helping much here unless you really need to sand something flat.
Also I’d grab some quick drying wood filler in case you need to fill some defects in the wood.
Here’s another idea. Try to test your process on a piece that’s easy to redo, or that’s in an inconspicuous location first, and see if it’s coming out how you like. I’d roll on the paint and then brush it flat. Use a nice brush and not a chip brush. You may want to thin it a little or use an extender to make it level out better, but maybe it won’t matter if the current paint job is poor. Get good paint, you don’t want to do this again soon.
Guest User | 4 years and 4 months ago
Great tips, thanks again… thanks, all.
So for the sanding – are we talking just sandpaper and a block, ie no power tools? Or is there a sanding tool? Sorry, I’m a total newbie at this stuff!
And @victoria and @steve -good idea to look into satin or pearl options. Should trim be the Regal Select? the Ben Moore salesperson advocated for Advance paint for trim.
@urbandad – thx for primer and heat gun tips.
hkapstein | 4 years and 4 months ago
There is probably lead paint so the main question is whether you are sanding into the lead layer or not. An alternative might be to use a chemical deglosser which has its own drawbacks but won’t generate any dust.
I’m a big fan of zinsser bin, but I’d think twice before priming the entire area with bin. The zinsser instructions recommend against priming an entire surface with bin. The shellac base is considered more brittle. You may have a layer of shellac under there anyway though. Bin is also more expensive, and a but harder to work with and cleanup. It may be better to save it for trouble spots and use something else, maybe a water base primer like zinser 123. You might get away with only spot priming depending on the condition and type of the paint.
Also I’d say get a heat gun, and you can strip off any small areas where the paint is not well adhered or in such poor condition you wouldn’t want to paint over it.
stevecym | 4 years and 4 months ago
Avag, i will do so when at my desk, but they are on utica ave. Down further, not up by eastern or atlantc
stevecym | 4 years and 4 months ago
Spot on victorian. So when anything is less than perfect, step the gloss down. The gloss reflects light where the imperfections are and makes them stand out. But i did a door on a house in the heights about 2 yrs ago and had to match the inside to the inside trim. It was so nice i thought i was looking at satin impervo. It was not, it was the ben moore regal whatever in pearl, water base. It looked premium.
Guest User | 4 years and 4 months ago
Just to respond to that last question… if you’ve still got some rough edges on the trim/wainscoting, I’d suggest going at least one step less glossy than semi-gloss for the finish, so that would be satin. You’ll still get a bit of a shine, which will differentiate the trim from the walls (and if the walls are imperfect/patched plaster, I’d recommend going with a washable matte finish to hide those imperfections). Someone else might be able to weigh in about going even less glossy than satin, but then you’re down to eggshell, which is usually used on walls…
somedaytheocean | 4 years and 4 months ago
@stevecym slightly different topic re: older post about sprinkler system check – greatly appreciate if you can share the contact that you mentioned in an older post that can come and check if our sprinklers system is working. thanks in advance