We live in a Victorian townhouse converted into four flats. Our flat has a short section of Victorian cast-iron balusters with a wooden handrail. The balusters are covered in layers of paint, poorly applied in places.
Now I thought it would be easy to apply paint remover and strip them back to the bare iron, but I didn’t think that smell of the paint remover would cause the other flat owners to complain.
Plan B – use my heat gun. Wrong. The smell of melting paint was not well received.
Now I’m manually scrapping the paint off. The more modern layers come off fairly easily, if slowly; but the bottom layer is sticky or welded on, I presume this is the Victorian paint of varnish.
I did think of dissembling the whole thing, but many flat nails are used, and these won’t come out, as just below the surface they have rusted away. Using more force looks as if the brickwork will be badly damaged.
Please can the talented CC members give me some suggestions on how to easily remove all the paint exposing the bare iron, ready for a new coat of Hammerite paint.
Now I thought it would be easy to apply paint remover and strip them back to the bare iron, but I didn’t think that smell of the paint remover would cause the other flat owners to complain.
Plan B – use my heat gun. Wrong. The smell of melting paint was not well received.
Now I’m manually scrapping the paint off. The more modern layers come off fairly easily, if slowly; but the bottom layer is sticky or welded on, I presume this is the Victorian paint of varnish.
I did think of dissembling the whole thing, but many flat nails are used, and these won’t come out, as just below the surface they have rusted away. Using more force looks as if the brickwork will be badly damaged.
Please can the talented CC members give me some suggestions on how to easily remove all the paint exposing the bare iron, ready for a new coat of Hammerite paint.