Peelaway paint remover is the best I know of. It really does a great job. You need to apply it thick, like so thick you can’t see the wood under it. Let it sit a day or so and then gently scrape it off. Wash with soap and water and the wood is [...]]]>

Peelaway paint remover is the best I know of. It really does a great job. You need to apply it thick, like so thick you can’t see the wood under it. Let it sit a day or so and then gently scrape it off. Wash with soap and water and the wood is there. Really easy.

We have used all their products but recently started using their new one called Smart Strip. We tested both Smart Strip and Smart Strip Pro. The pro removed maybe 10% more so we use that because we do really big jobs with it. Every Brooklyn or NY renovation of a brownstone should have a big bucket of the stuff around.

We are a big believer in saving what is there instead of ripping it out and putting in new. The truth is that saving what is there costs the same once you factor in man hours. But it is not all about the money. It is about the green building and keeping what is there is greener by far. Usually it gives a better product anyway.

The odor doesn’t feel like it is eating your brain away. It is actually a product you can use without a mask or thick gloves. The greenest paint remover I know of.

If you are putting it on a wall where you can’t goop it on we found that you can apply a thinner layer and gently scrape it off after about an hour. It only takes the first layer of paint off. But then you can reapply the very same Peelaway you just took off and repeat. You can reuse the stuff at least once.

The folder below has some pics of us using it in the Brooklyn Green Show house. If you have a house in Brooklyn or NY that wasn’t renovated after the 70′s then you have lots of lead in the paint. You need Peelaway to get rid of it safely.

Here is how we applied it in an area where we really couldn’t goop it on. The end result was completely bare wood. A beautiful result. It allowed us to salvage a wood stair case that otherwise was really in bad shape. And using toxic normal paint removers is just out of the question. They are cancer in a bottle.

We have these old rickety stairs in the show house. They are good craftsmanship but have had to endure a hundred years of big Italian boys bouncing up and down them. And they are old, old and tired.

We need to keep them, though, because the space is too steep and windy [...]]]>

We have these old rickety stairs in the show house. They are good craftsmanship but have had to endure a hundred years of big Italian boys bouncing up and down them. And they are old, old and tired.

We need to keep them, though, because the space is too steep and windy to be accepted by today’s DOB code regulations. But the old stairs can be grandfathered in. It is more work to salvage them than to rip them out and put in new ones. But I like that I am forced to keep them because deep down I know that is the most sustainable thing to do.

We’ve spent weeks strengthening the stairs from beneath and peeling the ten layers of paint off them. We used a non-toxic paint remover called Peelaway. You put the paste onto the wood and cover it with this special paper and leave it 24 hours. The stuff heats up and the paint becomes good and drips off with the help of a spatula. No dust. No lead issues.