I forgot to stick with original title heading through these posts so I’ll have to go back and fix them.
But over the weekend we tackled the basement. We installed insulation on the concrete walls and began stripping the paint off the brick columns.
Our theme for the basement will be a mix of steampunk and Irish pub. The ceiling rafters, pipes, and bare brick will give the open industrial feel we are looking for. Mechanical accents will be added later. For now we’re building out the walls.
Originally we intended to leave the concrete bare or maybe add some paint or even brick overlay, but after some research we decided that it would be best to cover it in order to limit any heat loss or moisture buildup. This will be our TV/family room; I don’t want it to feel dank and basement-like. We will be framing up the walls this next week.
Sheri’s task was to remove a hundred years worth of paint. There are four of these and we want them to be bare brick. We tried several methods to remove grind or sand the paint off, but that turned out to be a bad idea. First, it didn’t work well at all and second, there is a very good chance that there is lead in the older paint. So, we gave up on that idea.
We tried a chemical stripper called, Citristrip. An orange gel that did absolutely nothing to this paint. The paint softened a little bit but not enough to remove it.
However, we had a savior in the paint industry. My wife happens to work for a distributor of chemicals used in paint. And the VP happens to be a chemist. Sheri called him with our problem and he had an immediately solution. Peel-Away from Sherwin-Williams. It is packaged as a kit in a bucket with everything you need. It is white paste that is brushed on and then covered with a special paper. Sheri applied it on Saturday and when she removed it on Sunday the paint peeled off in chunks! I was amazing. The product liquifies the paint, allowing it to be scraped off easily. There were multiple layers of paint on the column and it turned out beautiful. Peel-Away is an amazing product for anyone working with layers of old paint. We really had only one complaint: there is only about half as much special paper as you need to use the entire bucket. I suspect it is a marketing ploy. We’ll need more paste and paper to finish the remaining columns, but now we know how to do it. And the result is amazing.
So Many Words... 