The war on Milk Paint

Well it has been awhile since I last posted, the reason behind this is I have been at war on milk paint. Every trim in my house is painted with milk paint and 12 more coats of paint on top of that. I've had good success removing those top layers with Soygel, Peel Away, and regular methyl chloride stripper from Home Depot, but none of these have been able to scratch anything on the first coat of paint, which is milk paint. Actually until yesterday, I didn't know it was milk paint, but today I found out it was, because I was able to remove it with milk paint remover.

I ordered some of this after reading some posts from other home bloggers and hoping, just hoping that this would finally take the paint off. So I mixed the powder in some water and let it sit awhile. Then I pasted the solution on the trim and waited, actually I waited for 24 hours. Here are the results:









Milk paint before








This is milk paint remover applied onto the trim








Here is my first scrape test after 24 hours









Voila!!!! IT WORKS!!!!!!!!!!
























Here is the progression from beginning to end.


The bad part about doing this, is that I found that my trim was not varnished or shellaced prior to the milk paint being painted on. So it seems that I won't have my dream of shellacing the trim. Seems to be too much trouble trying to get the paint out of the wood grain. I guess I will just paint over it or milk paint it again. Well at least I know what works against milk paint and now you do too.