OT: Redwod stain

[Wayne Boatwright]

If pareviously painted, can redwod stain penetrate the paint? TIA

[gfretwell]

Not really. As a general rule, when you paint something you are struck with painting it forever. You can get redwood color paint or you can strip it, sand it and start from fresh wood. You still may end up with paint that did not go away. I would look at a site that has a lot of furniture restorers to see what the current state of the art is.

[rbowman]

No. Hoe much area are you talking? Step one is stripping the paint and the stripper will depend on whether it was latex or oil. I've never used any of the eco-friendly products but I can tell you Strypeeze is some mean stuff. If you use it skip the little latex gloves and go for the heavy neoprene types with gauntlets. This is from somebody who rarely uses gloves.

Then there is the heat method, either a propane torch with a flame spreader, an electric heat gun, or the infrared type.

In any case, it's a tedious process.

[rbowman]

My knowledge isn't very current but one furniture stripping operation I was familiar with used a vat of methylene chloride. We bought it by the drum for cleaning up a potting compound dispenser. It has a number of other uses including decaffeinating coffee.

It's not hand lotion but it never bothered me. It's about 25% of Strypeeze but that's laced with methyl alcohol, toluene, and acetone and really irritates my skin.

[trader_4]

It also depends on how old the wood is, what condition it's in, what form factor, how large and what kind of stain is under consideration. At one end of the spectrum, if you want to use clear stain, it's old wood, a large area and railings and the like are involved, the prep required would generally rule it out. At the other end of the spectrum, if it's wood in good shape, you're going to use a solid stain, then a lot less prep work is involved. Solid stain is similar to paint, except it doesn't form as much of a film. Not sure, but you might be able to apply solid stain over existing paint that's sound and properly prepped. But at that point, putting solid stain over paint, not sure what the point or advantage to it would be.