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Paint Home Decorating Renovating

Woodwork from hell!

4 years ago

The woodwork (skirting, door frames and doors) in my 1910 house need work. The previous owner at one point had them stained/varnished then painted over then with white. I can only assume they didn’t not prep properly because the paint work easily chips to revel the under brown colour. Since owning the house we had a gas boiler and radiators fitted, heating the house properly for the first time. This is making the wood expand, again causing more problems with cracked and chipped paint work. I would love to strip it all back to bare wood but it is too time consuming and labour intensive.

What are my option for making my woodwork look good?

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Comments (5)

VRP
4 years ago
I'm in the same position! I want to change it and just replace with new but my husband has said that he wants to keep it all. It's only upstairs that has the original skirting and frames. We were going to just sand it but same as you, it's started to chip and reveal the brown underneath from where they have just painted over the varnish!
I spent the whole of last weekend scrapping the paint off thinking I'll just sand over the varnish but it looked terrible so stripping it all back with a heat gun and a paint scrapper and then sanded. It looks lovely but it's so time consuming and have to carry on with it again when I can building up the courage to tackle it again! If you can replace I would!
HU-981922018
Original Author
4 years ago
last modified: 4 years ago
Thank you for the reply VRP, but replacing isn’t an option, the woodwork is the same period as the house and it’s more decorative than standard woodwork, trying to keep as many original features as possible. As it’s more decorative it makes stripping harder with all the crevices. I do have a great chemical method that works really well, strips the paint and varnish in one go, but its time consuming and I have a two year old in the house, don’t want to risk it with the little one. Hoping for a way to patch up what we have to look good after painting and hopefully a solution to stop future paint just chipping again.
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Wumi
4 years ago
It might be worth getting in a professional for a couple of days who can strip everything in one go. Maybe plan it while you’re away on holiday or stay with friends/family in the interim to prevent living with the chemical fumes.
Amanda Christie
4 years ago
I had the same issue in an old victorian place and stripped the whole property (doors, skirtings, mouldings, stairs) over the course of a few months with several techniques from chemical, to heat gun to finally cabinet scrapers...here's my advice...get your doors dipped, and for the skirtings and mouldings, buy yourself a cabinet scraper and one of these...https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000288LOW?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_dt_b_product_details

I WISH, I'd discovered the scrapers sooner. Honestly, they are the only way to go. Cost less and £20 and last forever. I mean, it's still time consuming, but doesn't burn the wood, not nearly as messy, or fumey and something very satisfying about scraping off layers of paint and varnish in 1 fell swoop :)

Hope that helps!
Amanda Christie
4 years ago
BTW - for the detailed mouldings, the smaller handle scraper has other options of rounded shaped heads you can interchange to suit.

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