Dennis Pierce

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Stripping down the bathroom

This weekend is the first one where I have tenants in the cottage, so it’s all focused on working on the bathroom in the house. Still in demolition/stripping mode with lots of paint and textured finish to get off of the walls and woodwork. The first pass is using the Speedheater on the woodwork around the window to strip paint off. Once I get that done, I apply CitriStrip to the molding around the door, built-in, drain pipe and the window.

While that bakes, on to the walls to strip off the remaining pink textured paint. I use a wallpaper steamer to loosen that up. As the CitriStrip continues to work, I use the Speedheater to rip all of the vinyl baseboards off the wall leaving a bunch of liquid nails adhesive.

Stripped walls and most of the woodwork on the doorframe is clean

I pause from scraping in the room to remove the bathroom door. The hinges are coated in tons of paint so I throw them into the crockpot with detergent and let them simmer for a few hours.

White paint starting to boil off

Scraping the white paint off after simmering

Like the hinges, the door is also coated with lots of white paint. I hit a few spots on the door with the SpeedHeater and it looks like the rest of the woodwork that the door was originally shellacked.

Before stripping

Starting to strip the door

Back to the room where it’s more stripping of walls and woodwork. At this point the CitriStrip is ready to come off so it’s using scouring pads and dental picks to try and clean up the pieces of white paint. After that lots of washing with turpentine.

Getting there with stripping off all old paint

Stripping the built-in