My Daughter has just bought an old house with oak beams that have been coated in thick black paint/varnish. Is there any way that they can be stripped back to the original wood surface in situ without wrecking the surrounding ceiling?
On Fri, 26 Mar 2010 10:23:43 -0700 (PDT), chudford gently dipped his quill in the best Quink that money could buy:
You will get plenty of advice on uk d-i-y, but another good scource is
Start simple - try samples with Nitromors, or with heat stripping. You might be lucky and it might just work.
Best thing I've used for this is a Makita brush sander (like a 6" wide rotary drum brush, made of sandpaper). 500 quid, but yoiu can hire them.
Much depends on what they're covered with. Bituminous stuff is horrible and I'd think seriously about either leaving them alone, or having a gritblaster come in and do them for me.
Worth checking by hand sanding whether the coating goes to a powder or gums up and sticks to the abrasive.
This kind of thing would be fast, and get you right to the edge, but they do throw crap everywhere.
surfaces might be a problem. Caustic types are effective on oil or spirit based coatings, but won't touch synthetic varnishes like polyurethane. They also seriously darken oak, but this can be easily reversed with peroxide.
Normally done by some sort of sandblasting. Very laborious but effective. It can be a diy job. The real work is cleaning up after.
Way to go. I've seen it done, great results, buy as Mike says its very messy.... very!
caeful sandblasting with calcium carbonate Not sand.
And, if possible mask up the ceiling with something fairly tough.
They can blast down to about 2-3inches resolution, maybe better if they take the time., so that's how far the damage will extend, and it tends to be mild pitting not total destruction. Even if the masking gets ripped, its better than nothing.
These can make a decent job of it:
Completely shags the beams, it's the chosen method of morons.
It depends.
Builders will insist in sand-blasting beams to remove the old paint. This is fine if you want to ruin everything inside the house and to ensure that one will be eating sand in every meal for the next thirty years.
I've found that gently wire brushing by hand produces the best results but it is tedious work and will take several weeks to do.
Any mechanical means will cause damage to the beams and that seems a shame.
As already pointed out, sand is not the only thing that can be blasted. Nutshells can apparently create a baby's bum finish on woodwork. Wire brushing by hand is the worst of both worlds- takes an age, and looks crap when you've finished
But how close to the ceiling could you get? I imagine they're built like a planer, which would leave the most difficult bit untouched.
And why would it do that oh wise one?
From what I have seen the brush goes close to the edge - but I am not sure if it goes right to the edge (with a little splay out).
The remaining bit you could tart with a multimaster and carbide rasp perhaps.
On Sat, 27 Mar 2010 18:08:49 -0000, "The Medway Handyman" gently dipped his quill in the best Quink that money could buy:
I was told that the finish will look sandblasted and that the beams rain sand for a long time after.
Mike P the 1st
As might be expected if you blast it with sand :-) However, there are many other types of blast media - baking soda, walnut shells, corn cob, and a whole range of plastic beads. How many of these are practical in your living room I'm not sure, but blasting is not a method to be dismissed based on its traditional association with sand.
and that the beams
No, it's a method to be dismissed because it's s**te. And produces a lot of s**te which hangs around your house forever. Every sandblasted finish I have seen proudly touted by one builder after another has been dreadful, no matter how they whittle on about walnut shells etc. The method involves the least work for them, that's why they like it. It ruins the appearance of the beams, and it's a great way to create a house that rains grit on the occupants. Builders never, ever clean up properly.
The wire brushing technique that I recommended is slower (just) but produces a good finish provided that one uses a hand brush, not an angle grinder.
Depends on how thick and hard the paint is. I had thick distemper, paper adhesive and other paints on several large oak beams. I used a scraper. The best one I found was a large wood chisel used as a scraper, held at about 75 degrees to the surface and pulled so that the bevel was on the trailing side. Yes, it was hard work but the finish showed good grain and was slightly polished. You can apply pressure in the right places and tilt the scraper to follow the surface where needed. I used an old
1.5" chisel, but a 1" would be OK.Peter Scott
Dont exaggerate. It only took about 5 hoovers a week apart to get all the calcium carbonate out of te riooms.
Including wire brushing
will cause damage to the beams and that seems a
Its an unavoidable fact. You cannot get all the stuff OUT of the grain without ripping it off, and some wood always comes too. The post carbonate blast here was pretty decent: Yes, it raised the grain, but a light sand was all it took to get a reasonable finish back.
As usual the only moron here is Firthfart.
Some of us of course have actually done, it and can speak from experience rather than ignorance.
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