Some General Thoughts On Exterior Paint Removal

Careful With That Power-Washer, Eugene

The first mistake I made when it came to tackling the removal of the old exterior paint: Using a power-washer. It sure was satisfying to see those paint chips flying off the wall, sprinkling down like wet pieces of yellow confetti. What I didn’t realize was the same highly-pressurized stream of water that was blasting away all that cruddy old paint was also digging notches into the cedar clapboards.

This was bad, but not the worst thing that could have happened. Most of the wood that was inadvertently removed was incredibly weathered anyway. After all, much of it had been exposed to the elements for years due to the failing paint.

Since the goal was to not only get the exterior “down to the wood” but to get it down to the “good” wood, much of the material being ripped off by the power-washer needed to go anyway.

Nevertheless, I don’t recommend taking the power-washer route unless you take care to regulate the pressure (or stand far enough away) that only loose paint is removed.

As with most power tools, these units have a purpose and do a great job. I just had to learn, the hard way, that getting drawn up in the thrill of pulverizing old paint with pressurized water was pretty stupid.

On Using Chemicals

The best chemical paint stripper, in my humble opinion, is Peel-Away 1. It comes in 1.75-gallon drums and I must have gone through a dozen of them before deciding that heat removal was the faster way to go.

This stuff isn’t for kids or the careless. It will burn your skin faster than you can say, “I should have worn rubber gloves.” Don’t ask me how I know that.

But when it comes to melting off layer after layer of hard, old paint, Peel-Away 1 is awesome. It’s awesome, but it’s not exactly easy. That’s because once you smear the paste on the wood you must cover it with the special “fibrous laminated paper” supplied with the product. This prevents the chemicals (calcium hydroxide, magnesium hydroxide and sodium hydroxide) from drying out, allowing them to dissolve in peace.

Once all those alkaline lovelies are finished with their meal, you peel away the film. Much of the goop – containing darn near all of the old paint if everything worked out properly – sticks to the film. You dispose of the messy film and you’re done, right?

Wrong. There will be plenty of slop left on the siding so it’s time to grab a long-handled, wide scraper and go to town. For the most part, this will reveal that lovely, hidden wood you’ve been longing to see. However, there will always be spots of paint remaining. These will be dealt with later.

Unfortunately, you still can’t take off those rubber gloves. You’ve got to wash down those clapboards with lots of water. There’s no way you can paint them if any of those nasty hydroxides remain. And even after you give all those boards a nice bath, another step remains: neutralizing them. This requires application of acid.

That sounds worse than it is. The makers of Peel-Away sell acidic neutralizer designed for this job. You just spray it on and, if you want, you can then test the wood’s pH to be sure. Don’t tell anybody, but I used vinegar and it seemed to work just fine.

Despite all the work, and the fact that I eventually stopped using it in favor of my beloved Wagner heat-plate, I have a fondness for Peel-Away 1. It did what no other stripper could do, even those with carcinogenic fumes that made me certain I would grow a brain tumor overnight.

Scraping By Hand

Seriously? Scraping by hand?

OK, we could have used a hand-held scraper and done this entire 2,900-square-foot house. We could have listened to what most of the books say: Remove the loose paint with a scraper. Then prime and paint! Coulda been done in one summer.

In fact, that’s probably the route taken by every other prior owner. I know it was the route taken by the people who sold us the house and that’s why the old, yellow paint – the sections that hadn’t alligatored and fallen off – was an eighth of an inch thick. Removing only the paint that was loose, and trusting that the adjacent paint was going to remain adhered for any appreciable time, would have been just silly.

It had to come off, once and for all. The bullet needed to be bitten.

That said, I sometimes grow weary of chemicals and heat guns and rotary sanders and belt sanders. There were times when I need the macho satisfaction of using nothing but my own muscle to rip away at my enemy. So I bought scrapers.

cheap scraper

I started with the inexpensive type like this. It worked OK, at least on the pieces of paint that were on their last legs. But the blades wore out rather quickly and soon the joy that came from sending those chips flying turned into frustration because they weren’t flying fast enough.

I wanted more. I wanted high-end. I wanted a paint scraper that snarled at paint and made it leap off the boards in fear. I don’t remember where I heard about Sandvik scrapers. I believe it was the same paint store from which I bought my wonderful Warner #382 Electric Paint Remover. “You want the best scraper? Buy this Sandvik,” is what the guy probably said.

Sandvik scraper

So I spent the money and bought the Sandvik. Yup, it’s a cut above the old econoscraper. You can push on this Swedish beauty and she’ll dive right under that paint with authority. I spent many productive hours letting her sharp little blade dig beneath tough patches and send them plummeting to the ground.

But a scraper, even one that costs in the neighborhood of $30, is still just a scraper. It didn’t take long for me to realize that my shoulder, already ruined from playing volleyball without warming up, was not  particularly enamored with my new friend. The fact that she came from Sweden didn’t matter.

Bring On The T-Rex

Because  some of the paint had already chipped away before I arrived with my thermal gadgetry and scrapers, much of the clapboard wood was exposed for years to the elements. Instead of being its normal red, the weathered cedar was gray and soft. Painting it would have been just stupid. Also, I’d foolishly dug trenches in many of the poor dears by blasting them with a power-washer.

Clearly, the entire house needed to be sanded. All that gray junk had to go. Now, you’ll find books and articles that say the best way to do this is with a belt-sander because it will let you sand with the grain of the wood. I’m here to tell you “Go ahead, sucker. You’ll soon learn the lameness of that advice.”

There is an alternative. It’s brutal. It throws sawdust into every pore and orifice on your body and, on a windy day, onto the neighbors’ properties. It can throw you right off a plank (and that could mean more than just a damaged ego) if you make a mistake and it makes the most vile, high-decibel clamor imaginable.

This monstrous solution began life as a Porter Cable 7403 Variable Speed Power Paint Remover, a unit that costs nearly $300 and, like a number of other tools I tried, worked, but only in lukewarm fashion. I remember the way the

Porter-Cable Before Surgery

paint kept clogging up its abrasive metal disks which, if I recall, resembled round cheddar cheese graters.  I never did use the thing for paint removal.

We're Not Messing Around

Instead I dis-assembled it, taking off the piece that held the cheese-grater disks and provided a means of cutting depth control. That left me with a big, heavy and powerful electric motor upon which I fastened a backing pad and the most gnarly sanding disks available.

I bought these Forney 16-grit disks by the case. They attacked the clapboards with a vengeance, ripping through the junk wood in seconds. For a guy who hates sanding, this was something I could enjoy because it was empowering and macho.

Of course, this aggressive approach could have been disastrous. Keep that spinning monster of a disk in one place for a second too long and you make a valley in your board. Constant movement was key, but it didn’t take long to master the touch.

The disks couldn’t get into the corners of the boards. That left a ridge at each end. These were removed with a belt sander equipped with sanding belts of almost equally aggressive grit.

Yes. There were swirl marks. You don’t rip away wood with #16 grit disks, across the grain, without leaving some swirl marks. Again, the belt sander was pressed into action. I was left with glowing, glass-smooth clapboards that just begged to be primed and painted.