To think this doesn't look like 4-5 hours work?

[Windsweptaway]

Currently trying to prep my stairs for painting, need to take them back to wood.

Have been trying to scrape paint/ varnish off, having previously treated it all with paint remover, since 4pm, but as you can see from the photo it's nowhere near done. You can only see about 2/3 of the stair rise, and I've not even started the part not shown.

I have to stop now as my arm is burning, but I just can't see how I'm ever going to finish it. Just clearing the floor is going to take the best part of an hour now 😞

How do people manage to do this? Am I missing something?

I married a painter and decorator. I shall fill, sand and paint rooms but am I fuck doing the woodwork. Just no, it's NEVER fun.

Get a heat gun and enjoy the smell, it's up there with fuel coal, creocote

@Moobootoyoutoo is right! Just Zinsser it! I’m dead lazy and don’t even bother stripping it back. Good sand down (get rid of all the lifting edges), Zinsser BIN then paint. It’s expensive but worth every penny; saved me hundreds of hours of labour and £££ on all the mahogany lacquered wood I’d have had to replace

YANBU, paint stripper is pants.

If you decide to heat gun it, just don't be a numpty like me and forget that any metal implements you are using get really bloody hot as well as the gun itself. Gave myself a wicked burn absent-mindedly putting my hand on a red-hot metal scraper. Not only painful but felt like a proper tit (which of course I was) which added a layer of pain!

You don't need a hoover holder with a sander this days. You can get sanders which attach directly to the hoover.

You can get handheld electric sanders with a hoover attachment so all the dust is sucked up into the hoover. Sexy AF.

You can get sanders which vacuum up the dust as they sand,.not perfect but better than nothing.

I think it looks great for 4-5 hours! I agree paint stripper is rubbish. I've got a fairly cheap sander that has a built-in vacuum section, and I find it quite good, but I've got to admit it doesn't really eliminate dust. It just makes it less bad. So not great if you are open plan! TBH if it were me I'd just accept things would get dusty - it'll be so much faster to use an electric sander and then hoover, than to do it all by hand.

Do you know if the paint is lead-free? Def. worth checking.

@Windsweptaway

Currently trying to prep my stairs for painting, need to take them back to wood.

Have been trying to scrape paint/ varnish off, having previously treated it all with paint remover, since 4pm, but as you can see from the photo it's nowhere near done. You can only see about 2/3 of the stair rise, and I've not even started the part not shown.

I have to stop now as my arm is burning, but I just can't see how I'm ever going to finish it. Just clearing the floor is going to take the best part of an hour now 😞

How do people manage to do this? Am I missing something?

A hand sander would be better to get in the gaps and narrow areas, otherwise as people have said,.you'll be there for ages manual scraping.

I'm doing same job at the moment. It is hell.

Is there a way you can check if the paint has lead in it?

@Wonnle

Paint strippers are next to useless these days , back in the day Nitromors would have sorted that out no problem

DOn't they make that any longer? I used it on a similar job to the OP's, still hard work but Nitromors certainly helped a lot. If it's to be repainted I wouldn't have thought that going back to the bare wood was necessary. I wanted to strip it then stain the bare wood, using a heat gun was good but I managed to scorch it a bit, luckily not too noticable.

@Mummy1608

You sand but someone holds a hoover under your sander at the same time. You'll still need to hoover the floor after but it'll only need a quick going over as you'll have caught most of it as you went along

But ... if you put dust sheets down, taped to the skirting, bits falling on the floor wouldn't be an issue.

Or newspapers, failing that.

@Feelinglow27

I'm doing same job at the moment. It is hell.

Is there a way you can check if the paint has lead in it?

Yes, you can buy kits. Just google 'lead paint tester kit'.

Lead paint is quite easy to spot on its own anyway. If you know the paint is older than about 1990, then it's quite likely it has lead in it. If you know it's from the 70s or 80s, it's almost certain. Lead paint is very shiny and brittle - it chips away in sharp flakes, whereas more recent paints that have more plastic in peel away.

Another one here for a carbide scraper, love mine, used it for many things. These will take it down to wood in no time. I found you need to use a lot of Nitromors, so not great if you’re doing a large area.
www.screwfix.com/p/harris-heavy-duty-tungsten-carbide-wood-scraper-2/45940

But stairs are a massive pita! Did ours recently, I only scraped the banister and posts. Everything else was just sanded enough to be smoothed/ key the paint then apply a primer coat.
Hate wood work!!!

@BringBackCoffeeCreams

You don't need a hoover holder with a sander this days. You can get sanders which attach directly to the hoover.

Wow! Modern technology doing kids out of jobs lol :D

I've got a small sander which has a bag attachment but it's still very messy. I used it in an upstairs room with the door shut which was just about ok, but I know it will be awful downstairs and every surface will be covered.

Have ordered a heat gun, off to collect this morning and hopefully make some better progress

I can still remember sitting sobbing on the staircase of a house we owned 40 years ago thinking I will never finish. I did but know exactly how you feel, good luck and hope some ideas on here work.

Yup, another vote for Zinsser once you've got it back to a decent flat surface. It even works over varnish. It's quite drippy though.

Heat gun - I did the same on our stairs and it took a fucking age. I had a right arm like Popeye afterwards but worth it

Keep going, a bit each day. Took me nearly a year to do mine! Looked beautiful but dark? 7 years later I repainted it all again in Fired Earths Bone White!

I did this at the start of lock down 1. Thought it was a chance to get the hallway done. Took weeks of sanding using a hand held sander. Then daughter got a new bed and we scratched the paint work taking the bed up, and it's still scratched now after all my weeks of hard work, I haven't been able to favourite redoing it

I am nearing the end of massive renovation project. As part of it we removed old incredibly steep staircase and installed new one in different area. 3 landings, 2 staircases, bannisters etc. We spent months saying we would paint x number of spindles a day blah blah. Ended up paying a decorator. Listened to spindle painter whinging for a week. It was new wood, so knot paint, primer, undercoat, 2 topcoats. Best money we spent. Its an absolute arse of a job. And you are doing it twice in effect, taking it off, then putting it back on. DH and I would have killed each other after very short time.

I have a scar under my eye where I flicked nitromors on myself. The biggest blob went directly into my other eye and I was so bothered about getting that out that, that I missed the blob that burnt me.

My bay window looked fabulous though!

Varnish is very hard to get off. Perfecta paint stripper is very good, but they may have stopped selling it because of certain chemicals it contains. An environmentally friendly alternative is Home Strip paint and varnish remover. I've used a lot of different paint strippers for work and was really surprised at how good the latter is.

www.ecosolutions.co.uk/homestrip-paint-remover/