Peel away stripper

[kreyszig]

So...my May bank holiday weekend job of renovating two gable ends has dragged on, mostly due to the paint stripping. I thought I had done well when I found some automotive stripper that still has dichloromethane in it...and fair play, it worked, but it was doing a layer, maybe two at a time. I had at least this weekend left just to get back to bare wood on both sets of barge boards.
Cue peel away; I bought a 5 kilo bucket, put it on about 5mm thick last night and covered with the blanket paper...went up tonight and can not believe how well if has worked. I was literally peeling off the paint/stripper mix all the way back to bare wood, about 4-5mm of old paint. I'm posting this because I have read so many people complaining in google searches about its effectiveness, and nearly didn't try it. I used the 1 version for old paint, and it has struggled where I hadn't removed the more modern layers. Everywhere else, one application has taken all the remaining paint.
It is expensive for large amounts; there may be other hydroxide based strippers that are cheaper and as effective. But I'd like my experience to show up if anyone searches this forum; it really does work well. I'll post some pictures later.
Here we go with pics:
In progress:


Before:
(Very before)

(Before peel away off)


After:




P.s: Paul; do you think that's a stain? Seems like it to me, but it's lighter than I would have expected?

 

[paulb33]

Excellent work! Great to see care taken to do things right for your special house.

So, a few thoughts based on these photos and others in your photo bucket.

Peelaway - powerful stripper that does the job. The worst part is getting rid of all the gunk, washing down and neutralising. That's at least half the job. Take care with the run off too. The biggest part of our timber stripping was cleaning of the bricks below.. :?

Stain? Its hard to say what you have there. The Peelaway will destroy wood treatments and make it hard to judge. It turned our base coat bright purple (which then tainted the brickwork...). It looks like that area has had past work. And, you appear to have had the same roofer visit as we have had, judging by the grey paint and mortar on the flashing? His patch must have covered South Wales.

I'm still half-minded to believe the original finish was black up there. Something about the black half timbering that remains lower down. Also, the beige layer suggests transition from original black to beige to brilliant white over time. I could be wildly wrong and it could be showing a Queen Anne influence here too. There's some great books on Norman Shaw's Bedford Park, which you'd do well to look at online.

It looks like a vulnerable verge there. Those fascia timbers are exposed beyond the tile line and would have taken a battering over the years. Of course, the original timber finish will weather differently to modern-day plastic paints. Its feasible that the original stain/paint has long gone or was stripped back when it was repainted over the years. Equally, those timbers may have been replaced over the past 100 years+. Compare with next door, perhaps. I note they have a different finial on the roof to yours. Is it the same on the side of their house? Of course, they might have originally had different finials too.

Is that remains of leadwork at the apex of that little gable? That would be the proper way to finish this, would keep it protected and would look nicely Edwardian. Good work scarfing in the timbers BTW.

Great to see care taken with these undervalued Edwardian properties.

Keep up the updates!

Paul

 

[paulb33]

Excellent work! Great to see care taken to do things right for your special house.

 

[plasticpigeon]

Still looks like red lead to me!

 

[paulb33]

Still looks like red lead to me!

Quite possibly so. In which case, it was probably white to start with.

 

[plasticpigeon]

I have a couple of edwardian decorating books, and all of them recommend red lead as an undercoat so that is why I think it is red lead. I wish I had taken pictures in my house of stripped woodwork. In my middle room the original finish was a sort of dark brown varnish, I say varnish as it wasn't very opaque so it was a bit like a cheap woodgrain effect. I know this as a doorway was boxed in and when I removed the boxing the door frame below was untouched. This was put over a red undercoat that looks exactly the colour of the basecoat on the barge boards. I have found the red on almost every piece of wood in my house, even on doors which I had dipped and stripped where the panels have new shrunk in the months after stripping, leaving a small border of red. I can only assume such a universal colour was an undercoat, unless of course every piece of woodwork in my house was dark brown!!

 

[paulb33]

I have a couple of edwardian decorating books, and all of them recommend red lead as an undercoat so that is why I think it is red lead. I wish I had taken pictures in my house of stripped woodwork. In my middle room the original finish was a sort of dark brown varnish, I say varnish as it wasn't very opaque so it was a bit like a cheap woodgrain effect. I know this as a doorway was boxed in and when I removed the boxing the door frame below was untouched. This was put over a red undercoat that looks exactly the colour of the basecoat on the barge boards. I have found the red on almost every piece of wood in my house, even on doors which I had dipped and stripped where the panels have new shrunk in the months after stripping, leaving a small border of red. I can only assume such a universal colour was an undercoat, unless of course every piece of woodwork in my house was dark brown!!

I'm with you, PP. Our bargeboards (which were originally chocolate brown) had the exact same red/brown as base, when stripped. I assume this to be red lead. Reason for my banging on about dark brown and staining is that it shouldn't be automatically assumed that bargeboards were white just because they are now.

P

 

[Feltwell]

As a matter of interest - why did you choose to use a chemical stripper rather than using heat?

I did all my fancy gable end timber here with a heat gun & scraper. Requires patience but it wasn't too bad a job, and there's no neutralising or wash-down run-off to worry about.

 

[kreyszig]

Thanks for your thoughts chaps. It does feel like I've taken off a good centuries worth of paint! I suppose it could have been stripped prior, but they did a good job if they did. I'm inclined to think primer rather than stain, colour wise my biggest worry at the minute is whether to change to cream from white!

That "lead " is the remnants of some silicone used to hold a diamond shaped piece of PVC at the apex of the gables! I've seen it done in wood on a house not far from here, but will be using lead to cover the apex. Suggestions on what this should look are most welcome!

I'm afraid I'm learning/making it up as I'm going with the woodwork so am probably committing a few construction sins along the way! I hope that my intention to do it right will end up doing the house some good in the end! Thanks for the kind comments, here hoping it isn't all a pile of rot in 5 years!

 

[kreyszig]

As a matter of interest - why did you choose to use a chemical stripper rather than using heat?

I did all my fancy gable end timber here with a heat gun & scraper. Requires patience but it wasn't too bad a job, and there's no neutralising or wash-down run-off to worry about.

It did cross my mind to be honest. For one I thought the stripper would be a lot quicker than it was. That plus a bit of paranoia about setting fire to the roof! I'm sure that wouldn't really have been an issue and on reflection it would have been a good and cheaper way to go. I'll probably give it a go when I do under the eaves, I couldn't afford that much stripper!

 

[Feltwell]

I found it worked well, but do be very careful and I personally would never use a blowtorch near the roofline.

When we took our roof covering off, we found lots of very old tinder-dry birds nests that we didn't know were there. Our roofer told me he'd heard a few times of roofers using a blowtorch and setting old nests on fire. Hence I used an electric hot air gun very, very carefully, not keeping the heat on any part too close to where a nest could be for long. Still worked OK though.

 

[kreyszig]

Judging by the racket at present we also have a few old nests in there! I'm intrigued by low temperature infrared lamps - anyone tried one?

 

[Feltwell]

I've got a putty lamp - very good for getting putty out carefully when reglazing windows, and it does take paint off as well, but it would be far too slow to use practically for stripping paint.

 

[paulb33]

Judging by the racket at present we also have a few old nests in there! I'm intrigued by low temperature infrared lamps - anyone tried one?

I recall there's one company distributing them in the UK. I spoke with them once. Eye-wateringly expensive, as I recall.

Am I correct in thinking that Peelaway is also safer than a heat gun from a lead paint perspective?

 

[plasticpigeon]

I think so, although I have found that there is quite a lot of peelaway to clean up even after very careful scraping and the only option is to wash it down to remove the last bits, which must wash lead into the surrounding environment. At least there is no danger of breathing it in though.

 

[kreyszig]

I recall there's one company distributing them in the UK. I spoke with them once. Eye-wateringly expensive, as I recall.

Am I correct in thinking that Peelaway is also safer than a heat gun from a lead paint perspective?

as PP says, true. A supposed advantage of the low temperature IR removers is they don't vaporize the lead either. Not that a heat gun isn't using IR, of course, I think the difference is the low temperature lamps radiate the heat rather than convect it. I've seen a few people DIY'ing them, so the cost could be made less of an issue. (e.g. here + here)

 

[Feltwell]

As a footnote, on the strength of Toby's and Delta's posts on this thread:-

http://www.periodproperty.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=14521&p=200173&hilit=scraper#p200173

I bought myself one of the Bahco 650 scrapers to try. What a bit of kit - I can't believe how easy it is to strip paint with it. You've got to be careful not to damage the timber, but certainly for external use such as the example on this thread I will definitely attack the paint with one of these before reaching for the heat gun, and definitely no need for chemical paint stripper. The only exception may be areas of curved detail, but even then you can get internal as well as external curved blades for the "Linbide" brand scraper, so maybe better just to go for one of those to begin with - I can only find external curve for the Bahco.

This has definitely joined my "list of tools I would never be without".