Floor stripping problem-HEEEEeeeelp!

[hellymelly]

We have an old dog,he has developed a bladder problem which means he can leak urine when he is sleeping.Unfortunately he sometimes gets out of his bed in the night and snoozes on the carpet.We have hired a machine and shampooed it,but it still smells horrible and so we have to pull it up.However under the carpet,under the degrading underlay and lots of even more degrading vinyl flooring (great) the floorboards have some sort of paint on them.I tested this for lead as obviously you can't sand it if it has lead,and it does (grrr).Even though it is black paint.The house is 1820's,I imagine the paint is at least 90 years old , it looks rather like a paint/varnish mix.We have tried two different non-toxic strippers on a section of it but its proving very hard to remove.We don't want to rip up the carpet until we know we can sort the foor because of the lead risk to our small girls. Is turning the boards an option? Anyone done this? or planing off the paint? I dread anyone calling round at the moment as you can smell wee as you come in,and my eldest is really struggling to settle down in year one and I want to help her by having plently of playdates. Dog's meds are so far not helping so we will be living in the house of wee until we(e) get this sorted.

try a little mixture of Surgical Spirits mixed with washing powder think bio is best (not liquid) in equal parts and top up with warm water in a spary bottle(shake it to mix it)and spray where there has been a wee spill my mum used this when one of her cats was poorly and weeing and it really helped with the smell.
sorry I have no info with the paint or how to strip it, perhaps you could see if Dulux(or other paint company) can offer advice
good luck

Thanks for the carpet tip, may need that in future,but I think the wee may have seeped through to the underlay etc, as we hired an industrial carpet cleaner but the carpet still smelled very strongly as soon as it dried.

this article might help a bit.

Do your daughters chew on your floors? If not, unlikely the lead in the paint on the floors will end up in their system. The danger would come if you were to strip the paint which could put the lead into the air. In this scenario you would want to wear a mask while stripping. Otherwise, just paint over the existing paint.

I had black paint/varnish like this on my boards; no idea if it had lead in it! Used a chemical stripper on it and it wAs a horrid job to remove it.

It's impossible to sand this stuff anyhow as it clogs sandpaper immediately.

I would advise getting a sanding company to deal with it or else opting for laminate.

Good luck

Sanding out of the question as it would produce truckloads of lead dust, and leaving the paint on the floors is dodgy because even if I paint over it,as it wears it will produce lead dust which can be inhaled or ingested by the children touching the floor.(If it was a door I would just paint over it)There is the added factor that is looks as though it might cause problems with anything painted on top,I can imagine it won't take new paint very well.I am sorely tempted to paint it a then re-paint it every few months,but getting it off would be the best thing all round.I can't face laminate in my pretty Georgian house-I might be swayed by proper lino though that is a very expensive option.We had our boiler serviced today and it is in the wee room.I was so embarrassed,I want it sorted asap!

Another option woud be to take up the floor boards...(easier than it seems) and take them to a place to "dip" strip them.

Or you could turn the boards. I have done it and it's quite easy.

I thought about turningt he boards,DH thought it would be really difficult so its good to know it wasn't for you-were yours quite ancient? Ours must be nailed down I think.

Yes, boards were 100 years old. They will be nailed down so you will have to put in a bit of labor. But really, painting over the existing paint will be perfectly safe. Just use a good quality floor paint. It should last for years.

I had painted floorboards in my previous home (a boat) and they wore very very quickly,they did get a lot of traffic because of the nature of the space,but the room in question gets a lot of traffic too so i assumed the paint would start to wear through pretty quickly.I used Ecos paint last time.I think we will have a go at turning them,if that seems impossible I guess its the paint route or linoleum...

turning the boards is easy, as is replacing them if they really stink of wee ..... another option is to overlay them with laminate/parquet flooring

replacing them would be tricky,they are 10" georgian boards.I don't think the boards will smell of wee,we have only pulled up a corner section of the carpet,but there is underlay and some horrible degrading vinyl flooring too under the carpet,I think the wee may have reached the underlay but not the boards.We have managed to get some off in our test area (!) but not enough,so I think we will probably turn the boards if we can.