Lest we get too wordy, an illustration of why we’re insane…

preparing to strip paint

non-toxic chemical stripper in action

serena scraping

Yes, I’ve clearly gone off the deep end and Tig went along with me. We are removing the 5 or 6 layers of paint from the trim of our master bedroom, which guarantees that we will not be moving in anytime soon.

It all started when I asked Tig to remove just the gunked up top piece of the trim, so that the lines would be crisp when we painted it white. Once he removed 95% of the paint, though, I didn’t have the heart to paint over it. I wavered back and forth for a while (there’s a lot of that, you should see me pick paint colors) until finally we said “What the hell, let’s strip everything”. In the last picture, you can see all three stages of stripping. We’re using an environmentally safe paint stripper that keeps any lead dust from becoming airborne.