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Re: >>New Fireplace
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Sinead C
Registered User
fireplace renovation
Hi all - does anyone have advice, please on renovating an old fireplace? It's a cast iron fireplace, dating from around 1895 according to the seller. It's been painted over in white paint, but I don't know if that's lead based or not. Apart from that it's in good nick, so what I really need to know is how to get the paint off safely, and what to use to bring it back to its former, jet black, glory!
Fingalian
Registered User
Fireplace Renovation
You could get it 'dipped' in a place that strips paint off furniture.....safest for you but also the most expensive.Burn it off with a blow torch ....best to do that outside .You could do it yourself using a something like Nitro Mors paintstripper...but wear rubber gauntlets and eye protection and work in a well ventilated room.It is a very messy business.
I did one in about 5 hrs ,working for about an hour a night, used an awl to pick out the paint around the raised decoration, rubbed it down with steel wool and put on a coat of flat black paint. I think you would need to use stove paint if you intended to use it as a working fireplace.
The paint stripper worked great on the more modern paints ( I think because they were cellulose based) but as I worked back through the layers ( and years) it became less effective. The last three coats I just chipped off with a paint scraper and the awl. I did it in an outside shed with no heat in the middle of winter and the colder it got the easier the older paint came off! Something to do with thermal contraction in the cast iron maybe???
It is a tedious job.
Some other posts
Sinead C
Registered User
fireplace renovation
Hi all - does anyone have advice, please on renovating an old fireplace? It's a cast iron fireplace, dating from around 1895 according to the seller. It's been painted over in white paint, but I don't know if that's lead based or not. Apart from that it's in good nick, so what I really need to know is how to get the paint off safely, and what to use to bring it back to its former, jet black, glory!
Fingalian
Registered User
Fireplace Renovation
You could get it 'dipped' in a place that strips paint off furniture.....safest for you but also the most expensive.Burn it off with a blow torch ....best to do that outside .You could do it yourself using a something like Nitro Mors paintstripper...but wear rubber gauntlets and eye protection and work in a well ventilated room.It is a very messy business.
I did one in about 5 hrs ,working for about an hour a night, used an awl to pick out the paint around the raised decoration, rubbed it down with steel wool and put on a coat of flat black paint. I think you would need to use stove paint if you intended to use it as a working fireplace.
The paint stripper worked great on the more modern paints ( I think because they were cellulose based) but as I worked back through the layers ( and years) it became less effective. The last three coats I just chipped off with a paint scraper and the awl. I did it in an outside shed with no heat in the middle of winter and the colder it got the easier the older paint came off! Something to do with thermal contraction in the cast iron maybe???
It is a tedious job.