Stripping Paint And Staining

jwagner010

I am in the process of stripping a thick green latex paint with a poly layer on top from a large four door cabinet (mostly flat surfaces). The wood seems to be in okay condition and the owner wants a stained finish after the paint is removed. I have found the poly and green paint easy to remove using a stripper from HD. However, there is a white undercoat that doesnt want to come off.

Any thoughts on techniques / strippers to get off persistent white undercoat to enable wood to be stained.

PS. No Jokes about the ugly Green finish - it was built in the 70s. What were they thinking back then?

slickshift

They were thinking "Avocado is sooo grooovy"
Of course, everyone smoked grass back then too

(image courtesy of porter-cable tools)

jwagner010

The funny thing is, the same color Avocado green is back in these days. They just call it 'Wasabi' green which is just more hip than Avocado I guess

Robie

If you have any inside areas a sander won't reach, use a card scraper or one of those three sided ones. If the cabinet has to remain in the customers house, I think a scraper is a prime option. A well-tuned scraper will make short work out of removing paint and primer.
If you use the electric sander, wear a dust mask as you don't want to be inhaling that stuff and try to hook a vacuum to it.

__________________

If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters. ~Alan Simpson

DecksEtc

I'm not sure where you are but there are a few places in my area called "Dip & Strip" or something like that. You can take what you need stripped and they drop it into a solution and it takes everything off. Not sure of the costs but I just thought I'd mention an alternative. 4 doors probably wouldn't be too pricey either.

PlainPainter

One of the techniques I have found to strip stuff like doors was patience.
Seriously, you put on paint stripper - and then you can't wait to start scraping. But it doesn't all come off easily. Now if you apply stripper - let it sit for a while - not too long, and then apply more stripper - wait some more - then more stripper. Eventually you will get to the point where all the coating comes off easily. Let the stripper do the work. If it can make the top layers come off easily - more stripper and more dwell will eventually make everything come off. But don't ever let stripper dry, it will make the paint hard as hell, and almost impossible to remove.

-plainpainter

Tom Rohland

Jwagner,

Not sure what stripper you're using now but you might want to consider upgrading to a more aggresive product.

Tom
Ranger Painting & Pressure Cleaning, Inc.

jwagner010

of Elbow grease and multiple coats of stripper finally did the job along with steel wool and a scrapper. Used a lot more stripper than I budgeted for but it looks great.