speedheater

Ummm…maybe only 3 or 4, but it’s 97 years worth.  Lots of distractions got in the way today, so I only accomplished a few hours of paint stripping and bought a few extra pieces of fir I needed for window sills.  Adding the drywall on top of the plaster means that we’d lose 1/2″ of depth on the sills, which wouldn’t leave enough extend beyond the casing.  That meant another trip to Mr. Plywood for some beautiful 5/4″ 1×4s.

I had mentioned our Speedheater in the last post, so today I thought I’d show what this thing can do.  We bought it when we started the house in 1994 and sort of built the $400 cost into our initial projects.  I was shocked to go to the eco-strip website and find that they are now $600!  Ouch!  Even though it was very spendy, we feel that it’s paid for itself several times over in terms of labor.  While I’ve never been able to get results anywhere near as fast as shown on their video, this thing does work miracles.  It can cut through many layers of paint at once, without chemicals or flames.  It turns the paint into a gummy mess that can be easily scraped off, as long as you’ve heated it up enough.  On average I’d say that I have to hit each area about three times to get down to bare wood, but perhaps we have a particularly tenacious variety of paint in this house?  And I’ll always end up with a trace of residue that I’ll have to finish with a chemical stripper and some steel wool.  Check out the pictures for proof.  This would have been a horrible nightmare to do with chemical strippers.  The second picture is my clumsy attempt to take a self portrait while running the Speedheater.  Since I can’t hold my camera in one hand and reach the button at the same time, it’s pretty tough to do!

Old growth fir, out from its hiding place

Speedheater self-portrait

I didn’t bother taking a picture of the 2nd coat of paint in the family room, so you can just look at the last post and pretend it’s a new picture, if you’d like

Today saw the end of the painting and the beginning of the stripping of the door jambs. Used the Speedheater (infrared paint remover) to remove the bulk of the old paint layers and then followed up with a stripper gel. Although not exactly quick, this has proven to be our “go to” combo when we have to strip trim in place. It’s the best way we’ve found to get paint off without sanding (obviously a no-no with lead paint,) but it’s still not very fun! And lastly, here’s a picture of our trim, ready to go on the walls!  Some of this was actually taken to be dipped and stripped 4 years ago!  It’s been patiently sitting in the basement, ready to return to its rightful place.  Most of this pile is original, but the base trim will be new, as will the crown molding.

Dipped & stripped and new trim

Here is a picture of one of Chloe’s windows, after we replaced them with dual-pane windows.  You can also see the initial attempt at stripping the casing with our speedheater.  The futility of doing all of this led to me to find Houck’s Stripping Center, where I would end up taking all of the door and window trim.  If you have a lot to do, dipping & stripping is the way to go!

Semi-stripped trim around new window