Strip doors and frames

[Leon76]

Advice sought in stripping paint of all doors, banisters,spindels, skirting in old house. We want to bring it right back. Much appreciate any info on methods etc. regards leon

 

[Leo]

I started doing the banisters and balusters in my own place a while back. It was such a horrible, time-consuming job, I ended up ripping the lot out and replacing them. Far superior results in a tiny fraction of the time.

Guess it depends on how old the house, and these parts are. Is it worth spending vast amounts of time restoring them?

For doors, you can get those dipped.
Leo

 

[OneAndOnly]

I got my doors dipped by a place near Croke Park a few years ago, great job altogether. I manually stripped the frames, stairs etc. It will take you a long, long time to do this. The results are great but it is not worth the hassle - I wouldn't do it again. 70 odd years of white gloss - gives me a fright just thinking about how much time I spent scraping, sanding etc...

A friend of mine got his door frames and skirtings done by an expert decorator to look like wood, they are unreal - looks very, very good you've need to get very close and touch to realise, its "fake". I would investigate this route if stripping was not an option or just rip out as Leo suggests.

 

[Petal]

I spent an unbelievable amount of time stripping about 10 layers of paint off the stairs and doorframes of my ~1960 built house. Worst job ever, but I love the look of the old timber. it's really old pine and almost looks like my wooden oak flooring. The doors I've yet to get done and I'll get them dipped. For the doorframes I used two different heavy duty strippers. Klingstrip and Peelaway. Very expensive, but very effectice. These are type of pastes that you paste on, put cling firlm or special paper over, leave for a week, peel off and wash about a million times. comes out perfect, but it's really really messy... Wouldn't bother with the normal paint strippers, almost impossible to get the stain out of the wood if you have anything like green or pink in your old paint layers!