Tuesday, November 21, 2006

"Enviromentally safe" stripper is an oxymoron

Being the clever girl that I am I thought that I could simply strip the front door of three layers of paint with just a dab of stipper and a putty knife. They make it look so easy on the infomercials.

The first time I used Jasco and got most of the paint off. It was a huge mess and left a lot of paint behind. I ran out and had two other types of stippers that I got from my mom. They were "enviromentally safe" strippers and I swear if you're going to use stripper you might as well just use the real thing.

The other smell-good strippers didn't really penetrate the paint. They just rubberized it and never did dry out like the Jasco. The Jasco became "one" with the paint and when I would peel strips off there was no wetness to it. The next day I finally saw some bubbling but it was a huge mess to get it off.

I finally ended up just scraping alot of it off with this nifty scraper tool set I got at Harbor Freight (a moment of silence for the cheap tool capital of the world)....There is STILL little bits of paint left behind. I've got to strip the back side of stain & poly so I'll take another stab at Jasco in the cracks.

Lessons Learned:
Just use the strong strippers. I found that Jasco was easier to use, easier to clean up and didn't stink forever because it dries out.

If you are stripping (not the Las Vegas kind) Harbor Freight has a set of scrapers with a handle that has a dozen different shapes on it for scraping paint out of little crevices or trim.

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