The one where Adam and Reagan hang out with a bunch of strippers in the dining room.

Hopefully the title of this post will boost our hits amongst 13 year old boys, a demographic which is normally difficult to attract to home renovation blogs. Now that we have you here, lads, seriously, tuck in your shirt, stand up straight and its called deodorant, look into it.

Recently, we decided to subject ourselves long periods of immobility, loud music, toxic chemicals and fumes, killing brain cells, causing skin irritation and annoying the neighbors. No, we are not going back to High School, we are stripping the paint in our dining room.

Pop quiz: What's more tedious than watching paint dry?

C'mon, can't be too bad, you say? Sure, paint stripping is not so difficult when there are one or two layers of paint. However, the trim in this room might have been painted anywhere from 6 to 235 times over the course of its life. Lucky for you, we are documenting the entire process.


Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble. Window sill after first application of toxic paint stripper. See the top layer of (gold) paint bubbling in agony.


How 'bout a little fire, scarecrow? This was early on, when I still had the strength to attempt a smile.


This much work took a full day. We finally got to wood, which looks pretty good.


This amount of work took 2 full days. FYI - there are 3 window frames, 3 door frames, 1 door, 1 intricate mantel, and lots of baseboard in this room that needs to be stripped. Multiply that out and you get several years worth of weekends working on removing paint from this room.

Why so long? #1 the aforementioned abundance of paint layers, which do put up a good fight against the chemicals we put on them (strength in numbers, you know), and #2 the impressive intricacy of Victorian woodworking. The reason we are taking this room back to wood is to reveal how lovely this woodwork is and originally was...which we now realize is both a blessing and a curse.

We finished the window frames:


And we finished (mostly) the closet door:


Then Adam finally got his wish - he started on the mantel.


Here's the action sequence for stripping paint off of one single panel on the mantel:











That's at least 5 separate applications of the stripping gel, letting it sit, and scraping it off.

The column capital looks pretty amazing, too, after a couple hours worth of work:


If you have enjoyed this post, take heart, we are only 30% done with this room.