Preparing for this project took forever but the project itself is also extremely time consuming. The doors have some lead paint on them on a layer under the top two layers and just removing it is one way to deal with remediating lead.
The instructions I watched for stripping paint all advised wearing gloves, a mask, and safety goggles. It’s really hard to buy PPE during a pandemic though- the shelves of goggles, masks, and gloves in the hardware stores are completely empty. I made do with my ski goggles, an N95 mask from fire season last year, and some yellow rubber gloves.
I started the paint stripping with just a small patch and was disappointed to find out that this would need multiple layers of stripper applied. I ended up having to do one layer just to get the top layer of latex paint off because it was preventing the stripper from reaching the lower layers. The second layer of stripper then removed most of 3 or 4 layers of white and off-white paint. Then the third layer removed a dark varnish under all the paint.
Finally I got down to the bare wood! That was very exciting but the project is not one I’ll be repeating. It’s hard to tell why it needs so many applications- leaving the stripper on longer doesn’t really seem to work because it starts drying and leaving patches of paint that are very hard to get off.
One tip from This Old House that I learned was to cover the wet stripper with plastic film to cut down on the curing time and keep it moist. That worked great but was a bit of a waste of plastic. I might try covering it with large pieces of paper leftover from packing and moving and see if that works when I do the other side of the door.
The stripper has to be applied in a very thick layer each time or it doesn’t work, so I went through a whole $25 bucket of stripper for the first side of the door. Pretty expensive and it took basically an entire day. I do think the other side of the door wouldn’t take as long though, because on this side, one time consuming thing was that on the first two layers I didn’t layer the stripper on thick enough so there were spots it didn’t reach. In retrospect, I would have gone back and done those spots over before doing the whole next layer to keep it even.
At the end of the process, I had a blister on my finger from scraping the paint off and my right hand and arm were sore and exhausted that evening. It was hard to wear the mask and goggles for hours at a time. I joined my family’s weekly FaceTime call after ripping off the goggles and my buff that I was wearing around my head for sun protection and my hair looked like a mad scientist.
There’s one more door with potential for lead paint but I’m not sure if I want to do this process again or if I just want to wet sand it. Neither one is easy.
