Your Place: What's best to remove paint from front steps?
Question: For many years we have painted our front steps. They are in very bad shape, and the paint is starting to peel and chip.
We have power-washed them to remove the loose paint. I'd like to know the best and easiest way to remove the rest of the paint.
Answer: You didn't say whether these steps were concrete or wood. Concrete is definitely more difficult because it is porous and paint tends to seep into the material itself, very much as it does to brick fireplaces and exteriors.
In that situation, the experts - www.all-things-concrete.com/remove-paint-from-concrete.html - recommend several techniques, including "shotblasting" the surface with tiny metal beads. The beads remove the outermost layer of concrete, exposing a fresh, paint-free surface that is all prepped for its next coating. The shotblaster also features a built-in vacuum that can suck up the beads after they are used.
Another suggestion is a grinder with a diamond wheel to abrasively remove the paint.
Sounds pretty tedious, but certainly not as toxic as using chemical strippers. The website above recommends a soy-based stripper that is spread on the concrete or brick and allowed to work before you remove it.
Fortunately, my concrete steps have never been painted, but the wooden ones on my old house were, and I was perpetually scraping, sanding, and replacing.
Replacing the wooden steps was always the best solution, but if the wood is in good shape, try using a nontoxic stripper or a belt sander (starting with coarse for removal and ending with fine for primer or paint preparation). I use a tack cloth after the fine sanding to pick up all the dust, and I always sand between coats of paint.
I once had to deal with interior yellow pine floors that had been stripped of their original finish, then painted with gray, oil-based, glossy deck paint. Even after I had sanded with a machine, the paint was embedded so deeply in some of the grooves in the boards that I had to use Q-tips dipped in stripper, and ended up filling the deeper ones with wood paste.
The one thing experience has taught me is that maintaining a painted finish on exterior surfaces subjected to constant foot traffic is a challenge.
Our front porch is a good example. For the first few years, I repainted the floor regularly, using the oil-based paint left by the previous owners. Even proper prep work wasn't enough to keep it from wearing off in less than six months.
I asked my neighbor for his advice, and he suggested first having the porch floor stripped and then finishing it with a couple of coats of semitransparent stain to hide the imperfections in the wood.
The fellow a contractor recommended took a couple of hours to sand the floor completely, and left the accumulated dust and slivers in a trash bag for the borough to pick up. Cost: $300.
Then I replaced some bad boards on the porch and applied two coats of semitransparent stain on the floor, sanding between coats for better adhesion.
Since then, I wash the floor every few months to remove accumulated dirt, and, in the spring, pollen. Once a year, in the late fall, I give it a good cleaning and add a coat to the floor to brighten it.
It takes two hours at most.
Get your dander down. From Panasonic: Animal hair or fur collects pollen, dust, mold, and other allergens that contaminate the air in your home. To reduce pet dander, try to keep your pet out of your bedroom and launder your sheets and comforters frequently. Have your pet bathed at least once a week and make sure its cage, litter box, or bed is cleaned regularly. Opt for uncarpeted floors.