Vanna White…at the Cross House
During the Cody visit, I managed to climb up the scaffolding on the north facade to see if I could get the pink film removed from the brick chimney. The film resulted from repointing the chimney in January. (This is sooooo not a month to do such work.) All the brick has a coat of red paint on it, so I knew I did not actually stain the brick pink, but rather the red paint. I thought: Would paint stripper remove the pink and the paint? IT DID!
Cody suggested using something I have never heard of before: spray stripper! And it worked really fast! I LOVE THIS STUFF! Here, Cody is channelling Vanna White in properly displaying the product for your edification.
Cody however could not spare much spray stripper, so I had the insane idea (surprise!) of seeing if a disk sander with fine sandpaper would take off the pink film. It did! It did not though remove the red paint, but I decided that this was OK. For…
…the first-floor chimney, and third-floor chimney, have yet to get repointed. Only when this work is complete at some future date will I also remove the red paint. But, the towering chimney is now, again, at least all one color. Pink film be gone! The scaffolding has been up almost a year and I am eager to take it down.
Today, Justin, too, channeled Vanna White in showing off his home-made way of assuring that the 12/2 wire does not kink. Because, the new wiring in the carriage house basement needs to be PERFECT to help correct a century of bad energy due to really sloppy work. Kinks? Oh, the horror.
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I have done both and yes you can.
Rather than paint stripper I have used furniture stripper that will remove paint and varnish. Looks like that is what you’ve got in that can. It’s how I keep my bricks graffiti-free. But it’s best to seal them first when they’re clean. Then it’s easier to remove, then reseal after you’ve neutralized and washed off all of the stripper.
I first witnessed the sanding of bricks when some workers dripped paint on my brick patio when painting my pergola. I caught them sanding the bricks sheepishly as I had warned them to put a tarp down and be careful. But the paint was removed (best to let it dry first as it was latex so you could scrap/peel up any thick drops), then have at it. They actually sanded by hand, first very coarse, then moved to finer paper, as in er not fine.
Film from repointing? As in it was pink cement? How could they manage to smear it all over? If you know how to repoint you use a very narrow tool about the size of the space between the bricks to push the cement in and it is time consuming but it doesn’t get smeared all over.
mlaiuppa, I’m the one who repointed the chimney! And, yes, I smeared the mortar all over!
It’s all good now, though!
I’ll bet you won’t do that again. Not now that you know what a pain it is going to be to get it off.
Do you have a tuck pointer and a brick joiner? Are you using lime mortar?
Amazon has a nice brick joiner and carries tuck pointers in whatever size of spacing is between your bricks. If you are neat to start with all you’ll need to do is to brush it off when you’re done. Even if you have to remove the paint from the bricks, it still won’t be as bad as if you had to remove all of the smeared mortar too.
My old house rule: Whatever it is will cost twice as much, take three times as long and you’ll always be missing at least one tool.
In the long run, it pays to get whatever specialty tool is required than trying to make do. It has taken 30 years for this to sink in and still, I will try to fudge. Thus it taking my three times as long to do a job. And sometimes I still end up having to make a trip to buy a tool.
So you are saying the stripper in a can did not remove the paint? bummer. I got excited for about 5 seconds that it would work to remove the white paint that the previous owner of our house used to paint over the stone fireplace. I suspect sand-blasting is the only thing that will work, should we ever get around to it.
Would depend on the paint and the stone.
Do a test to see if it might remove at least some of the paint. The more paint the better. Try stripper with a wire brush. You might also try the “orange” stuff that you put on and then cover with plastic wrap and let sit for a while.
Then instead of sand blasting, considering using husks or CO2. CO2 is the least messy as it evaporates, but is also the most gentle so it might not get the remaining paint off.
Thank you!
Bethany, the stripper removed the pink film AND the red paint on the chimney, And quickly!
Yay Cody, Justin and Ross!
All this working together to right all the wrongs!
Yay Ross for being such a good friend! You have friends willing to help!
Hi, Sandra!
Cody and Justin are not volunteers!
I’ve been binge watching Escape to the Chateau and Escape to the Chateau DIY. Perhaps you should take a page out of Dick Strawbridge’s handbook. Not only does he get volunteers to come and work in his walled garden for the day, but he gets them to pay him 75 Euros for the privilege. And they have to make reservations in advance.
Think you could get people to pay $50 to do some work on the Cross House or the Coach House in return for a sack lunch picnic?
Righto!
That chimney is going to look so much better when you’re able to remove the paint. I always found the painted red jarring, but the natural brick color (though seemingly a subtle change) has much better harmony with the rest of the material/ color palette.