Paint Stripping....

So I attempted to strip a bedroom door with chemical stripper.... it was no fun. I'm convinced that chemical stripper sold at Home Depot, ( much like home depot itself) is purely a cruel trick for homeowners; they promise "easy" stripping and flash images of rhino skin thick paint effortlessly falling off of intricately carved wooden surfaces.



The interior doors, mantles and mouldings have multiple coats of old paint gobbed on, filling in all of the detail and flaking off in large chips. Our previous attempt to strip one door took us about 12 hours, and 2 cans of chem strip. @ ~$25 per can of stripper, there has to be a better way!



After confiding in a friend my troubles with stripping old millwork and doors, he recommended a paint stripping shop in Wilmington Delaware, called RandR stripping. I loaded up the front door and transom window in the old Ford and drove to scenic Wilmington to deliver the pieces. After driving back and forth across town I found RandR tucked away on an unmarked street, adjacent to a chop-shop. Bob, a jovial man of retirement age and the some, greeted me at the door of his cinder block-walled facility. Upon entering Bob's dimly-lit dungeon of stripping I was pleased to find a number of rather intricately carved pieces that had just come out of the dipping tank, paint-free.



Bob called a few days later; "What the hell was that door painted with on the outside?" he asked. The exterior surface had no less than 10 coats of petrified oil paint prior to stripping - It looked like alligator skin, with cracks throughout. Bob claims that the door had to be left in the dipping tank overnight to work over the rhino skin paint.



In the buff, you can see the plugs and patches that were made to fill in where old lock sets had been removed... The door has seen better days.