This piece of wainscotting is about 20 feet long with many layers of varnish. Clarke had wanted to just sand it and re-varnish but I said no that it had to be stripped to look any good. We had decided to strip it still attached to the wall because we weren't sure that we could successfully remove it without ruining it. I was using a heat gun because I didn't feel I could manouver the silent paint remover with the wainscotting still on the wall. When I began to strip the boards I would get a crispy strip of varnish but then there was a layer of some very sticky stuff left on the wall. At first I thought it was the varnish just getting sticky from the heat but the more I was fighting with this sticky mess more distressedI was getting. Thinking that I was in way above my novice capabilities and that maybe Clarke was right and we should have just sanded. After researching some solutions to this sticky mess I began to think that maybe what was so sticky was shellac. Many blogs suggest using Denatured Alcohol, so I set out to find it. Well I don't know if you can find it in Canada but you can't find it in Fredericton New Brunswick. Every place I went and asked for Denatured Alcohol the response was always the same, nope never heard of it. I am pretty sure that some clerks thought I was making it up. So I began to search for what I could use to replace Denatured Alcohol and I found Methyl Hydrate, bought a jug and brought it home. Low and behold it got rid of the stickiness. So we began a cycle of strip, strip, wipe, wipe and finally the wall was clean.
I was sooooo excited because I began to truly believe that I would die stripping that wall. I then stained the wall with Minwax Ipswich Pine. It turned out so nice.
It is kind of hard to see how beautiful it looks but believe me it looks very nice. Now we are trying to decide if we are going to varnish. Presently varnish is a dirty word to me.I am offically unbummed.
Nancy
2 comments:
No denatured alcohol!? Eeeeek—we use it every other hour or so around here. And I sure can commiserate about the neverending project(s) and not much to talk about. But your wainscotting looks amazing. Most of my trim is still in that awkward paint-off-mostly-but-still-gunking-up-the -shellac-underneath-that-also-needs-to-come-off stage.
Since finding the Methyl Hydrate we have gone through litres of the stuff and am not sure what I would have done if I hadn't. I guess I would still be back at the wall. I would have had to officially rename it to the crying wall!
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