The Verdict

Here is the window panes after removing the first round of Peel Away 6. In the "Ass Kicking Power" category of the triad Peel Away 6 falls flat.
There were some things I really liked about the product. First of all it was a different consistency than the other paint strippers I have used thus far it was a bit more pasty and made a little less of a mess during the removal. Second of all I liked the cleanup, that it used denatured alcohol rather than mineral spirits. Then there was the smell... seemed to be a bit milder than most. It did do a good job on my test spots on the back stairs but that isn't really enough for me to purchase this product again. The back stairs are shellacked if I was patient enough I could sit there with my denatured alcohol and scrub that finish off.

I did decide to try the peel away on the door to the stairs. Here is a side by side comparison
This is after using the heat gun and two rounds of stripper. Citristrip on the left and Peel Away 6 on the right. I think the citristrip results are far better, the thinner texture allowed Citristrip' to better permeate into the grain and into the cracks and crevices.

Next door frame, I will try Jasco Green strip. I used it on the doors that I have taken down into the basement and I am interested to see how it does on a vertical surface.

Kitchen Door - 8 Hours Later

Here is what the door looked like at 7:30 this morning. I am cautiously optimistic.

Kitchen / Stairs Week 7

I think I may have to stop titling these posts with the current week... it's starting to get a bit depressing. On to the progress :) I finished up the doorway to the dining room, sans the top molding we removed it for repair. Now we only have 4 doorways left arrgh. On our other project, Chris finished up the ceiling in the stairway and I washed the stairs down. I'm hoping I can get them covered up tomorrow night, so we can get into some plaster repair yipee.

In addition to the trim on the dining room door I also got started on the door to our back hall. I'm very nervous about breaking the glass while using the heat gun so I've resorted to chemicals only. This is the first pane I tried this is after 2 rounds of Citristrip, letting it sit for 24 hours both times. I'm less than pleased with the results so I've decided to try once again try to look for the holy grail of paint strippers, non-toxic, smells like fresh air, removes all of the layers of paint in one fowl swoop. I know this is probably a futile task but whatever keeps me sane right?


So I've decided to try Peel Away.... it seems like many people are fans of this product. My local Lowe's store had only Peel Away 6, so Peel Away 6 it is. So how does it do on the scorecard for the holy grail of paint strippers. 1. Toxicity-Seemed to be pretty friendly I did allow the stripper to touch my bare skin and it didn't seem to burn so, so far so good. 2. Odor - Peel Away smells faintly of urinal cakes, but even so it is the best smelling paint stripper I've used thus far. 3. Ass Kicking power - TBD...



I decide to do two panes of glass... one I covered in wax paper and the other I left out to the elements we will see tomorrow night if Peel Away is the answer to my quest!

Kitchen / Stair Remodel - Week 6

Wow, it's week 6 already... yikes!!

We made some progress on the stairs this past weekend but with the holiday not quite as much as I'd hoped. The walls in the stairway are all cleaned off and Chris was able to get a good start on the ceiling. As for me I've been stripping trim in the kitchen. Previously I was focusing on finishing up the baseboards but I decided to switch gears for awhile and get a whole doorway completed. I have the dining room door sitting in the basment on sawhorses as I write this... it's been down there for about umm 6 weeks now. I haven't had the time or motivation to finish up the sanding on it.

Anyways on to the progress.

Saturday:

Monday - 1 hour:
Wednesday - 1 hour:

While I was spending all that time up close and personal with the door I discovered that the decorative trim piece on this door isn't one piece it is actually 4 separate pieces glued together so the top molding on this door is going to be taken down and repaired before it is stripped.
I had a little different task to take care of on Friday. Our upstairs bathroom shower has a curved ceiling so it is a bit challenging to fit a shower curtain properly. Prior to this we just cut off the bottom of the curtain to shorten it and then doubled up a couple of the loops which worked out okay, but half of the curtain dragged on the floor while the other half fit beautifully. So I decided to cut one to fit the curve and this is what we came up with.


It's a bit hard to appreciate with just the liner but I'm hoping to get a new outer curtain this weekend on which I can demonstrate my technique.

Week 5 - Kitchen / Stair Remodel

Not much progress to report from this weekend. Chris did however finish up the removal of the little bit of wallpaper left on the stair ceiling I spent Friday night and most of the day Saturday working on my day job. We had a virus outbreak which hit a good portion of the servers and workstations. The silver that my boss is pretty good about comp time so I'll have two half days later this week to work on the house or at least relax. I started cleaning up the walls in the stairway on Saturday between virus scans and finished cleaning up the right hand side wall (give or take a few inches at the top) tonight.

Here is the finished wall vs.

The unfinished wall

I'd like to get paint on the walls this weekend however I'd settle for finishing up the cleanup and getting all the patching done.

The trim could really use a refinishing, the previous owners didn't believe in painters tape, and apparently lacked a steady hand so there is random paint slapped everywhere, however the project scope is already so big I think we're going to live with it for awhile and maybe I'll work on it this fall.

Week 4 - Kitchen / Stair Remodel

My parents came up again this weekend to celebrate my birthday and help us out a bit with the house. Even with their help, the pace of the project has slowed to a crawl. I've moved off of the floor scraping and onto the trim and baseboards. So far everything I've worked on on this project has involved kneeling, scraping, and scrubbing.



Chris and my dad did some more clean up on the kitchen ceiling and pulled out the stove vent and some of the abandoned ductwork. In one of the remodels past they cut off the cold air return to the upstairs kitchen with the new window but left the duct in place. Nothing like having a hole in the wall for no reason.

Last night, Chris started work on the wallpaper again, it looks like he's gotten over his fear of tigers :)

Even though we are still in a state of destruction. It does help to think of putting it all back together, we're thinking about amber shellac for color on the kitchen floor with a water based polyurethane over top to protect it from moisture and scratches. I think our floors were originally waxed but I'm afraid that we won't be able to keep up with that. I'm going to try to get the pantry floor sanded so we can use it as a test to test our finishing options.

Stressing out once again

The stress of going to work during the day and living with the remodel is starting to get to me again. Well, it's not so much the actual remodel it's just living with the mess day in and day out. This remodel is probably one of the worst because it's impacting most of the major arteries of the house, the kitchen connects do the dining room, the stairs to upstairs, the back hall and the downstairs bathroom and since you don't want to be constantly shoving tools around the dining room has become our tool room. Some days I wish we could just live somewhere else and just come here to work, although I'm sure that has it's own challenges. So here is what I've been doing this week.

Monday night I scraped off the Citristrip after letting it sit for about 24 hours, it made a pretty good dent in the paint but I did have to apply a second time I think maybe if I glopped it on a bit thicker I would get better results, after a good scrubbing and a patch for the old outlet this piece of floor will be ready to be sanded.



I was also able to remove the rest of the vinyl on the back stairs and got a stair and a half de-fuzzed. It's much harder to work on the treads than it was to work on the rest of the floor the pine is not nearly as forgiving as the maple in the kitchen. I'm hoping I can finish up the rest of the treads tonight and get another thing checked off of the list.


Sounds like my parents or at least my dad will be up this weekend to help us out again. Our kitchen ceiling has some somewhat interesting carpentry that he and Chris may be figuring out.