This morning (before coffee, even!) I slapped a coat of stripper on a small bookcase/room divider thingey with which my mom grew up. It's been in my possession for years and I've meant to undo that unfortunate paint job I gave it in the late 80's.
Apparently, today was the day.
Let me tell you I LOATHE this type of work. It's not fun. It's not pretty. It's not the fun sorta messy. Unfortunately, it's rather necessary.
After fetching a cuppa and while the stripper did its thing, I did a bit of sanding on an old desk/vanity I picked up somewhere along the way (some yard sale in Birmingham) that's also needed love for quite some time.
Until something happens to make me reconsider, both these items will get a stain finish rather than my usual mess around with paint until something interesting happens treatment. Gah- am I getting boring? Surely not...
There's tons of helpful stripper how-to info out there, so I'm not going to reinvent the wheel. Helpful links:
- Paint stripping: the site isn't very pretty, but it is quite informative
- How stuff works "how to strip wooden furniture"
And I always forget to take "before" photos, but here's a "during" after giving up on the icky chemicals (aka: I ran out of icky chemicals and didn't want to buy more because it's icky and I have plenty of sandpaper):As a bonus, I stumbled across this cool tip for removing paint from hardware sans chemicals at youtube while googling for helpful linkage. It has nothing to do with these projects, but I wanted to save it for posterity just the same.
