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Here's a pet peeve for you: when a weekend project stretches into a Monday project.
Consider this a PSA to all you DIYers out there. Having run out of my go-to aerosol paint stripper, my enthusiastically green local hardware store guilted me into trying Ready Strip. The label states that the product takes at least 30 minutes to be effective, but I figured I was better off killing time than braincells. Ha! Let's see if I can reenact the process for you.
30 minutes after application: Is it ready to strip? Hmm. No.
1 hour: Ready? No.
4 hours: No.
8... 12... 24: No, no, NO!
Hour after hour, this useless goop just sat on top of the paint. When I finally got frustrated with all of the pointless scraping and reapplication, I gave up- only to find that cleaning up this disgustingly sticky mess would take another hour of scrubbing. Now I've got a patchy chair and a whole lot of aggression (though I guess that might help with the sanding process).
What a disaster! Anyone else have a DIY-Gone-Wrong to share?
4 Have Spoken.:
I was wondering when we'd see pictures! The chair has great lines!
I got the super deadly paint stripper, held my breath, covered everything in plastic, wore giant rubber gloves, and disposed of everything in a very secret-government-operation kind of way. Had I a Hasmat suit, I would have worn it. And we still had to sand the damn thing more (I was working on the pedestal base of a table - the table top I did with our sander and didn't bother with stripper).
My advice is to get out the dust mask and get one of those rubber handles to attach the sandpaper to - I had major sanders-cramp all weekend :) Good luck!
Amen, crafty sistah. I'm the queen of underbuying paint and then having to make the frantic dash/retail walk of shame to pick up more paint. That happened when I was repainting a bookshelf. Luckily it was just spraypaint, but I think I went back to the hardware store TWICE in one day. I was like, yep, me again. ;P
Maggie... It came with a desk I bought on craig's list ages ago. It was free, so I thought I'd use it as an experimental finishing project. Ha! $20 and hours of labor, it's STILL sitting on my doorstep half-sanded. I just can't get that darn paint off since it was melted by the Ready-Strip!
Denise... I had the same problem on my vanity desk. I went to the hardware store everyday for another can of spray paint. I was getting really friendly with the cashiers!
I had the same problem with a shelf I was doing for my studio. It was with the "safe" soy based strippers. It was an insanely gooey mess, I even went as far as painting over it when thought the piece was "Dry" again and safe to paint.
Disaster! Scrapped the white stuff off, as much as possible then liberally applied mineral spirits. It helped but there is still goo in the tiny places but I no longer had patience for it. I gave up and hung it anyway. The shelf is rather distressed, but looks great.
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