By far the most time consuming process of these amazing doors is stripping and sanding them. We are pretty sure that there is somewhere around 5 layers of old paint on these guys, which doesn’t make the job all that fun. I’ll give you a little tutorial of how we {totally only J, I mean, this is a serious job!} did these doors.
Supplies:
- Good quality sander. We use a DeWalt sander, which cost us about $50.
- A good quality stripper. Hmm..that doesn’t sound good..yikes. We use the Klean Strip KS-3 Premium. We ended up using two cans of this stuff for 5 doors, although that probably isn’t necessary. Also a thick pair of gloves is recommended while using the stripper.
Process:
- Get a really rad old door. We love ours that we got for $5 a piece!
- Apply a hefty amount of stripper. Like I said earlier, we probably used way too much, but the more we used, the easier the job was…SO we used a lot:)
- Brush the stripper evenly all over. Make sure to have gloves on during this- that stuff is no good for the skin. Once evenly distributed, let sit for around 15 minutes. At this point, listen in awe at the random times that you can literally hear the stripper working. It makes an awesome crackling noise sometimes. And if yours isn’t fun because its not making a noise, then do something else to entertain yourself for 15 minutes.
- This is what it should look like at about 15 minutes. So cool, huh?! I might be easily amused as well though…
- Take a scrapper and lightly start scraping away! FYI: we technically used the wrong type of scraper.You are supposed to use a plastic putty style scraper. We used what we had on hand, a metal one. You won’t need to use much pressure, but if you are having some areas that are being stubborn, just make sure that the amount of pressure you use isn’t creating divots in the wood.
- This is what it will look like during the process! Hooray for making progress!!
- Once all scraping is finished, you’ll move on to sanding. Sand, sand, and more sanding, is what it takes to get it smooth {at least on these doors}.
- Just a tip: Don’t think even though there are different colors showing, that it isn’t smooth. In the circle above, the door was completely smooth, even though there were brown and green showing.
Hope this helps for anyone out there trying the same process. It took anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 1/2 hours to fully strip and sand one door. Its not a fun process, but in the end, the smoother the better. Next up- some painting tips:)
<3,
Adri
PS- I linked this up with my favorite parties🙂
Only $5…what an awesome price for these old doors!
Blessings,
Linda
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This is my least favorite task…you make it sound fun. I have a HUGE table I have to strip, and can’t decide if I will stick with Citristrip (no stinging) or use the methylene chloride like you did.
Christa
Lots of work but well worth it!!
I have never stripped anything. Seems like it would be a lengthy task, you make it look easy! lol.
Beautiful doors! 🙂
What beautiful doors! Thanks for the tutorial.
I kind of really like the layers of color just the way it is. Are you tempted to not paint it? Thanks for the tips.
You are all so awesome! Thanks for the feedback! And while the tutorial may make it look easy, it isn’t. But its not so much that its a hard task, more so just super time consuming!
Cathy- we thought about it a little, but realized since these are going to be all of our interior doors, that might be a little “much”. If it was just one door for decoration, headboard, etc. then we probably would leave it multi-color!
<3,
Adri
OMG. Found you via Pinterest.
I don’t understand the insanity of using flesh-eating chemicals. Citristrip will remove (for me so far) up to 7 layers of paint and NOT scraping, no sanding. Just squeeging the goop off into a plastic bucket and neutralizing with water. I’ve done 15 of these same doors, one a weekend.
One coat for paint removal on one day (go to work and leave it), 2nd coat for stain removal (go to bed and check in the morning). No flesh lost, done in the house in front of the TV in my jammies. I stripped my kitchen cabinets in place.
Although your results are gorgeous, it’s awful that you worked so hard, with such awful, unnecessary chemicals.
I’m staring at a French door right now, with my Citristrip right next to it, ready to go.
I really appreciate you writing this comment! We did this project a long time ago, and at the time- natural products were no where near our radar! We definitely would do it differently now knowing what we do. Glad you told me about a safe product. Thank you!