What the flip have they done to paint strippers?

[wigglybeezer]

I know they had to change the formulation for "elf and safety" but not rooms is useless, I thought it would be OK 'cos I am only trying to get rid of one layer of paint plus a layer of old brown varnish ( Victorian fake woodgraining on my shutters, very dark brown! had to go as doesn't match the doors and floors). Any suggestions?

that should be Nitromors. All I have to show for my efforts is a slight headache, a sticky mess and a hole in my wallet!

Do you have a hot air gun? I use this for stripping all old paint/varnish - and it works a treat (but keep away from glass). I'm presently restoring a 65 drawer wall chest. .

Once the worst of the stuff is off, I sand the wood - either by hand or with a sander, then finish off with very fine wire wool dipped in white spirit to clean the grain.

Scrape and burn it off.
Nitromors has had all the ingredients that actually do anything removed, because they also do nasty things to people who don't read the instructions and use it properly.

Oh, or if you can take the shutters off the wall, get a quote for a company to strip them for you - Mum got loads of doors stripped at a furniture restorers. Not cheep, but better than 15 layers of paint herself!

I was a bit worried about using a heat gun, in case of scorch marks. I thought it would be easy because of only two layers of paint, however, proper ancient paint is really tough stuff.

Think I will treat myself to a heat gun and proceed carefully.

Be careful with old paint and heat guns because of the lead in the paint if you do go down the heat route (probably the best) make sure you have a proper ppe mask (not one of the throw away dust ones)

Don't burn it off! You may scorch the wood and be unable to remove the burn marks (and the fumes are awful!)

I used a poultice stripper on our bannisters (awful gloss over mahogany varnish) and also on our marble fire surrounds (several layers of gloss). Much better than nitromors (the evil original version too!) Poultice strippers are also supposed to be safer in terms of low fumes and keeping air-borne paint particles down, although I'm no expert.

I used Klingstrip - this site is quite useful: www.stripperspaintremovers.co.uk/

Just be careful when you rinse the wood. It's quite messy so it's tempting to drench/soak the wood when flushing off the stripper but I ended up causing serious cracks to the wooden bannisters doing this (something to do with the water causing expansion).

Had exactly the same problem when I started stripping off a Victorian fireplace - you might as well spread Swarfega on it. Apparently the chemicals that worked were removed in 2010.