Enviro-friendly paint strippers

Spring changes everything, including what you feel like doing around the house. Have you noticed how refinishing furniture is one of those jobs that somehow seems a whole lot more attractive with the season's first warm breezes? But happy ambitions alone aren't enough to strip an ugly piece of paint-encrusted furniture, releasing it's full potential while keeping you safe from toxins. For that you need to know about the latest advances in earth-friendly paint strippers.

Traditional paint strippers are based on methylene chloride, a hazardous product that remains in use because it's so effective.  Twenty years ago safer alternatives began to appear in the market, but most of these didn't work well, garnering a bad reputation for safer strippers that's no longer warranted.

Today's safer paint strippers are at least as effective as methylene chloride formulations and a lot nicer to use. I have three current favorites: Citristrip, Organistrip and Greensolv. All resist drying out, which means they keep working to soften thick coatings for as long as you leave them on. Want to avoid the use of paint strippers completely? Heat can soften old coatings, but you need to be careful. A propane torch is the traditional heat-stripping tool, but it's both a fire hazard and possibly a source of airborne lead vapour. Anytime you heat lead-based paints too much, this toxic metal is released into the air, posing a serious respiratory hazard.

An infrared heating lamp is a much better way to soften paint without chemicals, and I know from experience that a tool called the Silent Paint Remover works well. It's at least as fast as a torch, yet it operates at a low enough temperature to prevent vaporizing any lead that might be present in old paint layers.

Next week I'll show you how to scrape off softened paint most effectively on your way to a great new wood finish.