Questions & Answers

You may be starting a home project or be in the midst of one or have some experience you'd like to share. So here's a forum for that exchange. I can answer questions about certain problems or challenges but, remember, I'm not a licensed contractor. All you're asking is for my opinion. If you want to respond or add to any entry, just send it along and I'll add it as soon as possible. Thanks. Ron

Hi Ron, I just spent several very enjoyable hours on your "house love" web page. Thank you for sharing - it's a great house!

How did you refinish the radiators? Did you use the same heat gun & steel wool method you describe for the woodwork? I am having trouble getting the paint off the inside nooks and crannies of my radiators, and don't know what to finish them with when I have the paint off.
Thanks! Kathleen, Baltimore, MD

Hi, Kathleen: thanks for checking out the website. At first we didn’t know what to do with our radiators. They were painted over with gummy off-white paint. We tried applying chemical stripper to them and then heat guns, but had no luck. Some people remove the radiators from their houses and sandblast them clean. Ours are too big for that. We decided to scrape them clean with paint scrapers. We used the kind that have triangle blades, which were really good for getting into the radiator's design. We also used ice picks, old screw drivers, metal files--whatever bit into the paint. This took a long time but it worked pretty well—it got off the goopy paint and help rescue the radiators’ detail.

Our strategy was to reveal the detail, scrape off whatever our tools would budge. Then I took a wire brush to the radiators. And then I wiped them down with alcohol (90% or grain). The main thing is to get them clean—especially in all those crevices. I used alcohol-soaked rags, shoved around with long-bladed screw drivers.

We learned that you DON”T need a special paint for radiators. They don’t get hot enough. For a top-coat we chose Modern Master’s “metallic paint collection,” which is water based and comes in a wide range of colors. Jill likes to mix paints to make a richer hue. So that’s what she did for the radiators. For a couple of them, however, I also used Rustoleum’s American Accents metallic paint (gold), which is oil based and fairly toxic.

We primed the radiators with a tinted Kilz--the interior/exterior water-based variety that's compatible with latex or oil paint. You can buy tint at any paint department; it's a little tube of stain you squeeze into your paint gallon. You'll need more than one tube for white primer. The darker the primer, the less topcoat you'll need because you'll have less show-through. The paint on all of the radiators has held up well. I think the heat makes for better adhesion, though that could be my imagination.
Good luck with yours! Ron

Our new home--an 18990 Queen Anne Victorian--is by far not in bad a shape as your home was when you purchased it, but there are some things that we would like to restore. The major thing would be to remove the paint from the interior window seals, doors, and wood carvings . We can’t decide what would be the best way to go to get this project started. We do not want to damage the wood below the painted surfaces with the process of paint removal, because we don’t want to repaint the wood after we remove the paint. We like to only remove the paint, and than hopefully buff the wood up a little with polish etc.

All the information on the internet is so confusing …there are hundreds of paint removers out there, and they all claim to be the best. None of the products advertised mentions if the wood below the painted area will be damaged. Would you have any advice how to get started? Andre & Bobbi, Atlanta, GA

Hi, Andre & Bobbi: There's a lot to say about stripping paint (I devote quite a bit of time to it in my book). But here's a short answer: infrared heat is the way to go. We bought a Silent Paint Remover from Air-nailers. There are a lot of brands out there. They all do the same thing, housing two quartz heating tubes in a handled container that you hold up to your painted surface. These are the same quartz elements found in space heaters. They don't get hot enough to make the paint toxic (though you should wear a mask). And they heat a large shoe-box-sized area evenly.

If your woodwork has been painted over varnish, the heat will make the paint bubble and almost lift off. You have to practice a while with various tools to get the knack of lifting the paint off. Hot paint smears easily--you want to get under it and pry or flick it off. The removed paint (which cools quickly) will be as brittle as corn chips. The stuff can be ground to dust very easily, so you want to sweep it up as soon as possible.

We follow the heat treatment with a heat gun for the stubborn areas, then a rough steel wool dipped in high-content (90%) rubbing alcohol or grain alcohol. And then a light sanding.

No matter what you do, you will end up gouging and/or roughing up the wood. So you will have to do some sanding. That means you'll have to refinish the wood. I can talk about that too (at another time), if you'd like.

Another technique I use is a razor scraper. After the initial strip, I rub down the wood with the alcohol-soaked steel wool, I let the alcohol sit for a couple of minutes, then I scrape the wood with the edge of the razor blade. As soon as I get a minute I'll draw a picture of this and post it here. I scrape with a downward motion, firmly holding the scraper near the blade to get the most leverage.

The razor-scrape method has worked really well for me because it shaves off the slightest surface of the paint-saturated wood.

The main thing is to try a variety of tools and techniques. And wear a mask. Feel free to ask questions. And send us some pictures. Best of luck. Ron

FOLLOW-UP FROM ANOTHER REHABBER: I don't have an infrared heat gun, but love my regular heat gun for removing paint. The only problem I have is with windows - the heat breaks glass. After this happened to me twice, I just stopped using the heat gun on the windows and re-painted them. Kathleen. Baltimore, MD.

RESPONSE FROM RON: Yes, those heat guns get really hot. Jill and I have devised a couple of ways to work around this. Tape over panes of glass with cardboard covered with aluminum foil (shiny side out). Another method is to simply hold a piece of thin plywood (quarter inch) over the pane as you blast the trim with heat. Both methods have worked well for us. Thanks for sharing. Ron

Ron, I've got a wet basement and I don't want to spend a fortune getting it fixed. What do you suggest? Suzanne. Monkton, MD

Holy cow, Suzanne. This is a huge question. Let me start with some basics: if your basement is underground (fully or partially),then the first thing you want to look at is drainage around the house. Concrete and masonry are really porous, though they don't look it.

Let me give you a very simplified drawing to illustrate the concept. The yellow shows where the home-owner has replaced the soil with gravel (actually you cover the gravel with about a foot of soil). At the bottom of the gravel, lying on some pvc liner, is a perforated pvc pipe angled so that it drains to a receiving area away from the house. That way, the water hits the pipe and drains away before it hits your basement wall.

The basement wall could be sealed also, on the inside with a product like DryLoc and on the outside with any number of waterproofing products, the most basic of which would be tar.

If the leaking persists, then you'll want to install something called a "french drain" in the basement itself. The concept inside remains the same as the drainage technique outside: you'll dig a two-foot trench--just inside the wall, all along the perimeter of the basement; then you'll put in gravel, a perforated pvc pipe angled to a sump-pump at the back of the basement; then cover the pipe with gravel. The gravel trench acts as a barrier to break the flow of moisture across the basement floor.

There's a lot of info. you can pull up online about techniques. There are few things more unpleasant--and potentially hazardous--than a wet basement, so you're right to seek some remedies, Suzanne.