Have you made any plans for this winter yet?
Well I have. Hooking and stripping. The past few days I’ve been stripping wooden beams with Citri-Strip Paint and Varnish Stripping Gel and whoa Nelly, it’s been a workout.
Okay, so not as hard as hiking in the mountains or anything, but stripping is hard work!
The studio {cottage?} is full of old hand hewn wooden beams on the first floor. Wooden beams that the previous owners PAINTED white.
I told my husband that if we were going to create an old English/seaside vibe over there, those beams couldn’t possibly stay white.
In theory he agreed with me. He thought the rooms would look great with exposed wooden beams. But exposing those beams would be way TOO MUCH work.
He said forget about it. Just leave them white.
But I persisted.
And told him that if he didn’t want to do it, I would sand the beams myself.
He just rolled his eyes. Said it would take forever plus twenty two hundred days and that he now thought the beams looked just fine painted white.
But still I couldn’t get the idea of cozy wooden beams and white walls out of my mind. It was actually keeping me up at night if you can believe that.
What to do, what to do.
And then I remembered all that furniture I stripped with Citri-Strip Paint and Varnish Stripping Gel a long, long time ago.
Long story short…
I bought a tub of the Citri-Strip and so far I’ve stripped the beams in the powder room and a few in {what will become} the living room.
No, all the paint did not come off with my first coat of orange goo.
But I think I’m off to a good start.
Ideally, I don’t want every speck of white paint removed. Which is a good thing, because that’s totally not going to happen.
But 95% of it though? I think by not removing all the paint it will give the rooms more of that warm/comfy look I’m going for.
I drew an arrow on the photo above to the section of the beam that I like the best.
It’s going to take some serious work, but winters are long here in Maine and this should keep me busy for a few months. 😉
So yeah, that’s what I’ll be doing this winter. Hooking and stripping.
Hobbies. We all need them.
~Mavis
Brianna says
I spent my summer stripping 2 built in giant 9’ bookcases that surround a fireplace. The previous owner painted the shelves to the bookcases so I couldn’t adjust the shelves. The shelves were not salvageable. I had to clean paint from the brackets, the frames, the wooden details, inside, and outside. It was not a fast and easy project, but I finished last month and it turned out beautifully. I had a local woodworker make me new shelves from walnut and a matching mantle from his property and they are stunning. I ended up using almost an entire gallon of stripper and a ton of sandpaper.
Sarah says
Your hard work will pay off! It is going to look amazing!