Stripping/Sanding doors
Radiators are hard to do no matter what. We used methylene chloride. If i had to again i would use lye and a pressure washer.
andriywww1990
in General Discussion 4 years and 6 months ago
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hkapstein | 4 years and 7 months ago
I came across some old interior doors I would like to try to refinish(paint). I tested one for lead paint with a test kit and it was negative. I’ll probably send some chips to the lab to confirm, but I’ve found the tests to be pretty reliable, so assuming the doors are lead free, would it be better to sand or strip the wood? I tried some citristrip, but it’s really not getting the job done, and it will use a huge amount of citristrip to get the job done. I’m considering making a steam box and steaming them or sanding them off with a sander. Which do you think will be a better experience for a DIYer?
Thanks!
andriywww1990 | 4 years and 7 months ago
how old are these doors? if the citrus strip is not working, chances are they have old lead paint underneath so how deep did you take the lead test? if they are pre 1950, they might have lead and would be surprised if they did not. manufacturers began phasing lead out during the late 1940’s for interior paint.
you don’t want to sand. you can sand the flat areas with a Rotex and begin with 40 grit to break the surface and move to 60 as soon as you can. but with a dewalt? not really and to hand sand the moldings will take eons.
there were other options until 2019. we had something called rock miracle, methylene chloride, but because some individuals could not or did not follow the directions for use in confined space and keeled over, we all suffer. they still make it and we can still get it but it is now $70 a gallon, more than twice the price pre 2019.
rock miracle makes a replacement chemical and it is flammable. they have peel away which works but is expensive and we have used heat and steam. the heat is laborious. if you get a Jiffy steam gen erator (for steaming clothing) and put a box around the end it works but is a mess.
so this is what we do: Lye. but before doing this read the safety warnings. and some people say this stuff will burn through your skin, i have already put my fingers in it and nothing happens right away and i wash it off before anything does. here is how to make lye paint remover for about $8 a gallon – about 1/4 the price of the old rock miracle. and guess what, it has no offensive odor and is not flammable.
let me repeat: before doing anything i say here read the safety warnings and wear a plastic trash bag over your self and goggles (guess what, i have been working with chemicals so long now and acids so long that i do not wear anything – even with this stuff. i sometimes wear a chemical apron when leaning over a door but when you do this for a long time, you learn how to move around it and how to work carefully so that you do not slop it all over the place and don’t send bits of it flying back in your face; that said, in 1989 i had a chemical splash that sent me to the ER). when i have a helper using this stuff i MAKE them wear all of the protections and if they refuse to do so, i send them home.
here is how to mix enough to do one side of a door: Put three quarts of water in a large plastic container. Stir in 2/3 cup of powered lye. slowly stir that in. if you use lye crystals (red devil drain opener) you must stir it in even slower. take two minutes to stir the powered in and six minutes to stir the crystal lye if that is what you use. once this is done, stir some more. put 1 quart of water in another container and mix in 1/2 cup of corn starch. very slowly, pour the corn starch into the lye mix. stir and pour slowly. like over 2 minutes.
using an oil paint brush pour and spread the mix onto the door. cover it with sheets of plastic and leave it over night. a putty knife will lift the paint off in sheets. i do not cover mine with plastic. i put the mix on in the morning and spray a little water on with a trigger sprayer to keep it moist and then late at night i remove it all. steel wool works on the moldings. not the real fine steel wool and not the most course. we buy 15 lb rolls of it if we are doing more than one door.
you must neutralize this when you are done. we order litmus strips by the bulk and use the neutralizer sold by Dumond, the maker of Peel Away. sometimes it takes two applications of neutralizer. we will soon be making our own out of an acid but i have not decided what one yet and have not made up any mixes to run tests. if you do not neutralize this, they say the new paint will fail.
we will soon be practicing with a mixture with calcium hydroxide added to it. the lye and hydroxide are the same chemicals in the Peel Away (right, people are reading this and thinking this guy is nuts using the lye, but i am trying to make my own Peel Away). i am hoping the hydroxide is what gives the mix more pastiness than just the corn starch and helps work on the molding profiles.
anyone wishing to do this can study the chemicals in Dumond’s Peel Away. i called Dumond years ago and began asking them questions. when the conversation got too pointed and directed and they realized i was trying to make my own, they stopped talking and when they did I said “can you fax me an MSDS” and when i said that they began talking again. Look at the MSDS (Materials Safety Data Sheet) on line.
andriywww1990 | 4 years and 7 months ago
by the way, sometimes when we have a lot of layers on old doors and we can pull the moldings and restick them, that is what we do. we do that a lot as opposed to stripping the molding. i know, i know, the sticking is what you are trying to avoid.
RobertGMarvin
in General Discussion 4 years and 7 months ago
Isn’t there a possibility that a steamer might damage the doors? In any case you don’t have to strip them anywhere near as cleanly as you’d need for a natural finish.
T he e only painted woodwork in our house was in the kitchen, with MANY coats obscuring the details. A few years ago we had it roughly stripped before repainting. The painter used some sort of peel-away stripper. It looks great.
andriywww1990 | 4 years and 7 months ago
thank you bob for suggesting that the steam will damage the wood as it made me think of this: the lye discolors the wood so you cannot use it on anything that will be stained and clear coated. painted only.
in so far as steam damaging the wood. if you can work with the steam on a the painted surface and keep it off the wood, it is less of a worry. the steam does soften the wood but when it dries it goes back to normal.
and of all of the things we have tried here, including the infrared heat i like the lye the best.
Putnamdenizen | 4 years and 7 months ago
Lead paint ain’t no joke. Be aware not only of your own health, but that of your young children. Unfortunately sometimes the children of DIY gentrifiers show the same high level of lead in their blood as do children growing up in substandard housing. Sounds like OP is well-informed and able, but using this post as a place to share a gentle warning.
andriywww1990 | 4 years and 7 months ago
to what putnam said, sanding is bad. when we do we use the rotex with the festool extractor. and with heat, we have to be careful. too much heat, it smokes and guess what, airborne lead.
chemical is probably they safest from a lead standpoint. i have to say something else, i mentioned something on another post about a sanitation worker getting hit in the face with an acid years ago and i also told someone else here that they can dry paint with saw dust yet i declined to donate any saw dust to that person’s cause and this is why; this is what we do with the spent lye/paint mix: we put it in bags in and mix the saw dust in and let it dry completely before putting it in the waste stream (and yes the city allows the lead to go there and if we took it to a pay drop off site, that is where it would end up). we specifically do this because of that sanitation worker getting killed in 1995 or so and also because i had a chemical hit me in the eyes in the 1980’s.
dorkofwindsor | 4 years and 7 months ago
I guess this is a good time to throw a general question out to Steve and the rest of the forum: how much does it cost for a dip around these parts?
hkapstein | 4 years and 7 months ago
Thanks for all the comments here. I got these 6 doors for about 30 bucks each, so it doesn’t totally eliminate my sticking issue, but it may reduce the workload if I can use some of them. To be clear, I am very aware of the dangers presented by lead and stripping chemicals. I have a bottle of methylene chloride on hand from before it was restricted, but I really don’t want to use it. I considered using a caustic stripper like lye, which is cheaper, but also unpleasant to work with. I think I’d rather spend more time and not use lye. It’s also not great weather for working outside.
With respect to steam damage, it’s possible it would damage the door, but I think it would probably be okay and again I didn’t pay much for the doors.
I’m considering useing peel away 1, but it’s about 150-200 bucks for 5 gallons, but the question is, will 5 gallons be enough for 6 doors? I suspect not.
hkapstein | 4 years and 7 months ago
@ dorkofwindsor, I was quoted 175 per door for a dip and strip. If it’s possible to do it cheaper, that might be interesting.
hkapstein | 4 years and 7 months ago
Update, after reading steve’s post, I looked at the msds for peel away 1. Guess what the active ingredient is, yep it’s just sodium hydroxide, aka lye.
cate | 4 years and 7 months ago
Take it to a place that strips by dunking the doors in a bath and knows what they are doing. I have done this and they were terrific. Worst thing was the drive.
andriywww1990 | 4 years and 7 months ago
@ urband dad, with chemical and labor, using rock miracle it used to cost me about 240 a door (i had looked into making my own methylene chloride). with the lye, it costs me about 170 a door. once the lye sets for 12 hours or so, the stripping moves fast. faster than the rock miracle. it is so fast that i have begun stripping my own work instead of farming it out.
the lye is much more pleasant to work with than the methylene and new formulations. we just have to be careful not to get it on clothing and track it in the house. of course people must take safety precautions but we should have been doing that all along with methylene.
i have not used peel away in years but seem to think that their smaller pail did one side of a door. is that a one or two gallons pail, i forget. i think it is 1.5. it is very expensive to do a door. when i first called peel away about their product, we were trying to find out WHY it can remove 15 layers and what makes it different than Rock Miracle. it was then we learned that the only reason Peel Away removes 15 coats i s because they tell us to cover it with plastic. otherwise it would dry out – just like the rock miracle. so what we did was begin covering the rock miracle with plastic and guess what, it softened 15 layers of paint. i called Rock Miracle and told them that they should market their product as being able to remove 15 layers of paint with a plastic film over it, like peel away. Rock miracle did not change their directions to reflect this and i suspect why was they would have seen sales drop as people would be able to use one gallon to strip a door instead of two.
@ cate we don’t like dipping because it can interfere with the glue joints.
andriywww1990 | 4 years and 7 months ago
@ dork. urbandads quote sounds about right. i used to hear 150. i have never had anything dipped. we use a lot of elbow grease.
hkapstein | 4 years and 7 months ago
I decided to explore the steaming option, and wow was I was impressed! I purchased a wagner 715 wallpaper steamer at home depot, currently 35 dollars. I was prepared to make a steam box but I decided to try it out as is first. Here’s a test patch I did, it took me about 45 minutes to do a side using the steamer at a 5 in 1 tool. Will post a pic when I get ot it. I could probably use some better scrapers, but for a paint finish I think it’s not bad. Interestingly I could see and smell that the first coating was a varnish which I did not expect with these doors from an old law tenement. I do not see any serious damage to the wood from the steam using this technique. Would the steambox be faster? I don’t know, the paint hardens up pretty quickly once it cools. It might be worth a test though.
[20210126_182803](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s3/:brownstoner:0kin:20210126_182803.jpg.jpg)
JohnHancock | 4 years and 7 months ago
That’s very impressive, way better than most strippers!
stevecym | 4 years and 7 months ago
If that is taking you 45 minutes a side you are doing great. Sometimess i find it is good to keep the old methylene chloride around for the trim and corners.
JohnHancock | 4 years and 7 months ago
Do you let it steam for 45 minutes or steam and then scrape and then steam some more?
andriywww1990 | 4 years and 7 months ago
keep in mind that with a varnish under lay, stuff comes off easier. varnish tends to be softer and easier to remove than paint and is not a good bond between wood and paint. that citrus stuff you were using is great on varnish.