Stripping is oddly satisfying ... although it's also really hard work.
(laughing)
I picked up this bench at a garage sale here in my neighborhood recently, and I kind of thought
it would be a nice height to put plants on top of to make them harder for my new dog to dig into.
I really want to take this down to bare wood, and just stain it and put a coat of
varnish on it. And normally when I do something like that, I would try to get all the paint off
just using an electric sander, because I'm really not a big fan of using paint stripper.
But I realized, as I was doing that, that there's actually two different colors of paint on this,
and it looks like there's probably maybe at least four coats of paint in total on this, not including
primer. So I think I'm definitely going to have to use a stripper on this. And what I'm going to
be using is this Premium Stripper from Klean Strip. I just got this at my local Home Depot.
And I've never actually used a stripper in a spray can before, so we're going to see how well
this works. Normally I would definitely want to do this outside, because the fumes can get pretty
bad from this stuff, but unfortunately it is a very unusually windy and cold day here in April, so I'm
gonna have to do it inside. So if you do it inside, make sure that you have really good ventilation.
Now paint stripper of all kinds is very caustic. It can do some serious damage
to your skin, to your eyes...pretty much anywhere it gets in. So you definitely want to make sure
that you've got some gloves on -- if you've got thicker one than these, that's even better.
And definitely some goggles for sure. Some sort of protective eyewear.
A mask is great too if you want. I'll probably just wear a regular little paper mask, because I can't
seem to find N95 masks anywhere, but definitely protect yourself as much as you possibly can.
Oh! There's three coats of paint on there. It looks
like there's some green on there as well, if you can see it right there.
Now generally speaking, I wouldn't recommend what I'm about to do.
Using a pressure washer on wood tends to dig out crevices into the wood,
so it's not always a great idea to do what I'm about to do.
I got it at a garage sale for like five bucks, so I'm really not too worried about it if I mess it up,
And I've been spending a long time with this stripper, and I...AM...OVER IT!
I am going to start off using the widest nozzle that I have which is 40 degrees, so we'll see how that works.
Now I couldn't get every little speck of paint off of this thing. There was just too
many little crevices and knots in the wood, and especially in the corners and the seams underneath.
I just couldn't get in there deep enough to get everything out. I'm okay with it though.
This is just going to be outside, and it's going
to be for putting plants on and such, so I'm okay with it. But if you do a lot of
this stuff, and you have a good way of getting into those little corners that I didn't try,
please post it in the comments below, because i would love some ideas on how to do that.
As I was staining it, I couldn't help but notice that this thing was really wobbly, so I identified
what the problem was and found a piece of wood to cut down to size to fit into that space, then
attached it with some glue and some tacking nail, and then just sanded it down and stained it to match.
It doesn't look exactly perfect, but it's definitely better than having a wobbly bench.
So far, I've done four coats underneath, and five or six coats on the top. I just kept coming downstairs
and putting a new coat on every once in a while, without sanding it because I really wasn't too
concerned with what the final finish looked like. And typically with something like
a varnish, if it says no sanding between coats, I usually call BS on that. But I swear to you, hand
to God, the sheen on this is like glass. This wood was pretty rough to begin with, and there's only
so much that varnish can do to help that, but it really looks amazing, and there's no bubbles in it at all.
So I have to say I'm pretty sold on this product. It is more expensive than most varnishes,
but I've only used about maybe a third of it, maybe even only a quarter of it.
I could easily do two or three more of these without even stretching it.
I am going to sand it one time with 400 grit sandpaper
before I put the final coat on just to see what that does.
The best thing to use to get the sanding dust off before the final coat would be denatured alcohol,
which you get at a local home improvement store, but I don't happen to have any on me.
So I'm just using regular isopropyl alcohol.
But if you're going to do a lot of projects like this,
it's probably a good idea to pick up some denatured alcohol.
It's in with the mineral spirits and paint thinners.
This dog is all up in my business, ALL THE TIME!
Excuse me, get out of my shot please.
Oh, you're so endearing and adorable.