Sunday, October 11, 2020

Paint Stripping

 We have started the long process of stripping and restoring the wood work in our 1914 craftsman bungalow.  From what we can tell so far, it appears that the woodwork has been painted at least 40 years which means several layers of oil based paint.

From past experience, I know this is a long arduous process.  Our goal is to strip most of the woodwork in the living room and dining room areas.

We purchased the Speedheater 1100 kit to start the process.  It is a hefty $500 device to strip paint, but if it helps, it will be well worth the investment.

We have been at it for around 30 minutes, and we've already made noticeable progress.  Having used chemical strippers, I can tell you that this is much faster and less messy.  In the next couple of months we will be posting a more detailed review of the paint stripping device as well as more progress photos.





4 comments:

Sharon Kwilter said...

I have spent hundreds of hours stripping paint from wood. I used the speedheater for about a week and then passed it on. (Luckily, I bought it used.) It didn't work nearly as well as a $60 heat gun and it was really difficult to see when you were overheating an area. I was really worried I was going to burn my wainscoting. I hope you have better luck than I did. Perhaps it's better now; my experience was nearly a decade ago.

Sharon Kwilter said...

BTW, I'm glad to see you're back.

Unknown said...

How are you still liking/disliking the speedheater? I have been eyeing that for a couple of years and now am ready to start stirping the paint off all the windows and moldings....

Boe said...

So far we are mixed. We find it great for stripping the latex based paint due to the lower heat. We've found it much better than a heat gun, which in my experience, risks burning the wood. However, it has struggled to deal with the older oil based paints that are on raw wood. For the oil paints that were painted over shellac it works like a charm. Unfortunately, we have items in the house that are oil-based painted raw wood and it has been extremely difficult. It will probably result in finishing those areas with chemical stripper. Hope the additional info helps. Will have a more comprehensive review after we've used it a bit longer.