Losing the Stripping Battle… For now

Chronicling my adventures restoring and updating a quirky old Philadelphia rowhouse

Losing the Stripping Battle… For now

It started off well enough. I got the 2 parking spots in front of my house! This is super important for not getting sued. And my dad found safety gear. This Tyvek suit is older than I am. It smells like garage.

20180413_181147

The plan was to start with a few test patches and take it from there. But since I had already tried a solvent based stripper on the red paint and it didn’t work that well and the paint is pretty old, I decided to assume that it’s oil based and that a caustic stripper would definitely work better. So as the sun was going down, my test patch grew to the entire front of the house, my pace grew feverish, I wound up relying on the streetlight to see, and… I worked over my head (which I said I wouldn’t) without putting my hard hat on. This was just one little drip right near the end.

20180417_074407.jpg

Don’t worry too much. Yes, this was stupid and reckless and I knew better, but it’s just about healed now and I shouldn’t have any long-term health or safety risks from it. There will probably be minor scarring.

But what’s worse than a scar? The red paint didn’t budge!

So yeah that was annoying. But since all this was a bust, I went back to the solvent based stripper. The kind that doesn’t burn holes in skin. I reapplied it on the lower part where the weird bituminous coating was, and got a good bit of that off. You can see the line where the paint changes. The bitumen was on the first 5 courses of brick above the window sills. The bits of white paint on that brick were from the Irishman’s sloppy workmanship with my kitchen cabinets, and I still haven’t figured out what to do about them.

IMG_1962

But I also tried putting the solvent based stripper onto the rest of the brick, and found that:

  • Some of the red paint was in fact lifting, and it was lifting quickly.
  • A lot of the paint that didn’t lift was softening enough that the pressure washer could force water underneath it and it would peel off one brick at a time.
  • The pressure washer did not seem to be damaging the brick even when I used it aggressively.

So the following weekend I tried out a new procedure: put the solvent based stripper on early in the morning. Reapply it with a scrub brush to keep it from drying out. Repeat for 2 hours. Pressure wash off. Plan to be done before noon because the sun hits the wall at 1. And… the pressure washer broke!

At this point I was full on raging. I sorta halfway fixed it, but it left behind the worst amount of messy peeling paint yet.

Then this weekend I got one more weekend of stripping in, with the new pressure washer I just bought. I worked even harder on a smaller area of the brick, and got off all the paint I could with a combination of the scrub brush, the pressure washer, and my fingers. That leaves me with this, still peeling a little:

IMG_1961.JPG

So. The option to clean it up a little and then paint over it is officially dead. When I get over 90% of the paint off, the remaining 5-10% is still peeling badly. All these reapplications are using a lot of stripper. No matter what I do, it’s going to be expensive, tedious, slow, and messy. I figure it will take me 5 more mornings to get the whole facade looking like this, then I’ll need to do all of it again to get the last stubborn bits off, then I’ll still have to clean the pollution stains off so the whole wall looks brighter and more like the bottom.

But the good news is I won’t have to paint the facade. You know I never wanted to anyway.

 

15 Responses

  1. I’m ecstatic about the good news (not having to paint the brick again), but sorry you burned a hole in your head during the process of getting to that point. If it’s any consolation, your house really does look MUCH better than it did previously!

  2. You’re lucky that stuff didn’t fall in your eye!
    The shot of the protective gear, which is the one displayed on Bloglovin’, looked like you were lying down, which kind of went with the idea of losing the battle. In fact, you don’t seem to be losing the battle, but the war is dragging on longer than planned, as they do.
    Bravo for your progress!

  3. Devyn says:

    Ouch! Chemical burns are the worst. Sorry this has turned out to be a bigger project than expected. Stripping paint often involves wading into the unknown. It will be worth it in the end… After the memories of just how hard it was fade away. 😊

    • admin says:

      It didn’t hurt. Caustic burns often don’t, and that’s one of the scariest things about them.

  4. good luck with the rest of the paint removal. we will have that job soon and glad your burn wasn´t any worse

    • admin says:

      Getting it off masonry is so bad!

      I’m jealous of your shutters. I found evidence that my house originally had pocket shutters, the kind that fold up and disappear into the window embrasures. I believe they were taken out in the 1930’s, by which time the wall had probably sagged too far out of square for them to open and close right.

  5. Ross says:

    Have you thought about purchasing an infrared stripper?

    • admin says:

      I considered it, but I read preservation briefs that said using heat on masonry is not only ineffective but potentially damaging. And I don’t want to use scrapers on the brick, and I can’t use the pressure washer and an electric appliance at the same time.

      It would quite possibly be nice to use an infrared paint remover on the cornice. but I would probably try to rent one and bang out the whole job in one weekend instead of spending $500 on it. I already checked and the West Philly Tool Library doesn’t have one.

  6. tuxedomom2 says:

    Next time you’ll wear protective gear for the whole project. As my mother used to say when we did something bad or stupid, “Clearly I don’t have to scold you or punish you. You have learned your lesson.” When I was a parent myself, psychologists named this kind of progressive-thinking parentlng “using Natural and Logical Consequences.” So the Natural and Logical Consequences of the home repair gods have prevailed, and your fans and friends who love you can trust you won’t do it again. I do not want to know what Charmaine said about it. 🙂

  7. Ross says:

    Hooray!

    The evil ads are gone!

    Hooray!

  8. i can’t believe that chemical burn! how did you not scream and pass out? that’s horrible!

  9. yikes, that burn looks nasty!! I wonder if a poultice would work on your paint? I had to remove some stuff from cement, and the way it worked was a paste made from whiting (ground chalk) and chemical paint stripper, applied fairly thickly and then covered with saran wrap and left until almost dried. it took off all the mucky stuff….

Leave a Reply