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.
4 comments on "The war on Milk Paint"
You can shellac the wood. You need to buy a small tube of acrylic paint from a craft store for $1 in a medium brown or nutmeg color. Dilute it with water and colorwash the wood so that the color is uniform and the grain shows through. You could also use artist oil paint thinned with paint thinner but it will take several days to dry. Apply about 4 coats of amber shellac over the wood and give it the wax and superfine steel wool treatment and it will look like you want it to. Test on a piece of scrap first. If you use beige paint the finish will be a honey color. You can also add aniline dye to shellac to darken it. Watch my blog in a week or two because I will be explaining how to do this with some windows that I am working on. They were painted originally and I have re-painted them beige but will be coloring them with layers of shellac to make them like dark walnut.
If you go with the oil paints, you can use Winsor & Newtons Liquin Medium. You can buy it online at Dickblick.com (or other online art stores). If you have some good hobby or art stores around, they should have it too.
I'd recommend the Original Liquin or Fine Detail Liquin. This stuff will increase your drying time to around 6-24 hours depending on the paint pigments (red pigments dry the slowest for some reason, earth tones are usually pretty quick).
Go easy with this stuff, a little goes a long way. I'd say that roughly 1 part Liquin to 5 or 6 parts paint is good mixture to start with.
If you paint the trim with linseed oil and mineral spirits, then strip it using a heat gun, it should pull the paint out of the pores of the wood. Here's a link to some folks who did it: http://bungalow.blogsome.com/2006/03/03/stripping-continues/
Good luck!!
Hi Peter,
How many applications of milk paint remover did you have to put on the woodwork? I'm doing the same HORRENDOUS job, and the first one doesn't seem to do much. I'm going through bags of remover.
Thanks! Rob
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