Painted bricks can be stripped, restored
Q. I hope you can help me out. I have a split-level home built in 1961. The lower half of the house is brick, painted white. We have repainted over the years when it needed it. We now have had the house vinyl-sided. The paint over the brick has started to peel, and I started to scrape some of it off. It is a nice, soft-color brick, and I would like to scrape the rest off. It is taking some time. I know it is not good to sandblast brick, as it will usually harm the brick. Is there some sort of paint remover that I can use? I would want something that would not hurt the shrubbery in the front of the house and that is fairly easy to use. I have asked around at several paint stores, but no one could come up with a good solution. I hope you have the answer.
A. You could try pressure-washing the bricks; it will remove most of the peeling paint. Pressure-washers are down in price and very effective at removing weak paint bonds and many pollutants. I have a Briggs & Stratton pressure-washer and use it for cleaning my deck, brick walk, wood siding, dirt-catching mats, etc. It's also very good at cleaning concrete driveways, walks and patios.
To return to the original natural bricks, the best remover for the job is Peel Away. You apply the gel with a brush, cover it with the cloth that comes with it, and let it dissolve all the paint, regardless of how many coats. You should be able to get Peel Away in any well-stocked paint store. Be sure that you follow the directions for use and cover all shrubbery with plastic before applying the gel.
Q. Our house was built in the 1950s and has the original bathtub. It was repainted in 1987 (by the person who was doing the same job at a local motel chain), and that lasted until recently, when the paint began to peel. We had assumed our only option was to have Bath Fitter cover it, but recently we saw an ad for Miracle Method Bathtub Restoration. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each of these products?
A. I have had no experience, good or bad, with Miracle Method, so I can't answer your question. All I can do is suggest that you ask the company how long they have been in business and for the names of five or six customers they did jobs for several years ago. Call them to find out whether they are satisfied with the job and how it was handled. Also, call the consumer-protection division of the attorney general's office of your state to see whether any complaints have been lodged against the company. The Better Business Bureau is also a potential source of information. Bath Fitter has been around a long time and, as far as I know, has a good record.
Q. We have several garter snakes under our front porch and see snake skins hanging out of our foundation. The area of concern faces the south. My wonderful husband has relocated a snake or two. But they keep reappearing. What are we to do? I'd take a spider any day over snakes. Help!
A. Garter snakes are harmless and actually serve a great purpose: They feed on rodents and other creatures you don't want around the house. You are the first person I have heard who prefers spiders to harmless snakes. If you insist on dislodging them, throw some flour under the porch, particularly around its perimeter; snakes hate to cross flour or bed in it.
Q. I would like to know how to remove decades of paint from wooden window shutters. They have many coats of all kinds of paint on them. They seem to be in fair condition otherwise.
A. Try Peel Away, a gel that you apply on the shutters and cover with the cloth that comes with it. Leave it on for as long as the instructions recommend. Remove the slurry with a putty knife, fold it in the cloth, and dispose of it following local environmental laws.
Q. I read your discussion about stained marble. We have a shower that has Carrera white marble sides and ceiling. The shower is 10 years old, and we have a fairly deep artesian well with the usual mineral content, including iron. We have a brine-based water-conditioner system and an inline 5-micron charcoal sediment-filter system. The wall and ceiling tiles of the shower have developed a reddish-color stain, sort of in blotches. None of the readily available iron and rust removers will take out the stains, nor will marble cleaning materials. I wondered if, short of having it reglazed in place (the nature of the enclosure would make this difficult), is there is any known poultice-type compound that could be applied on compresses of some sort, held in place with masking tape so that the stain could be "drawn out," so to speak, from the underlying porous marble.
A. It sounds like the stains are caused by the setting compound that was used to adhere the tiles to the walls and ceiling - or to some iron fasteners used to fasten a base material. You can try using 35-percent-strength hydrogen peroxide (not the drugstore kind; available at pool-supply companies) mixed in marble dust or white BAB-O or similar powder as long as it's white. Make a poultice, and apply it to one of the stains in an inconspicuous place as a test. Cover the poultice with Saran wrap and leave overnight. If it improves the stains, you may want to repeat and apply to the other stained areas. But be prepared that it may make matters worse, in which case, removing the stained tiles is the only answer.
Q. I live in a split-level house that's about 50 years old. Over the past few weeks, our water supply has been acting up and I'm at the end of my rope. What happens is this: the upper level of the house, where the full bathroom resides, receives water pressure just fine. So does the lower level where there is a half-bath and a laundry room. The problem occurs on the middle level where the kitchen sink resides. When you hit the hot water, it will run at full force for about 20 seconds and then it cuts out and slows to almost a trickle. The cold-water supply is unaffected. I have drained and flushed the hot-water tank (which is only five years old), and I've checked the feed line into the house from the municipal water supply. All is good. I've also flushed the water lines into the kitchen sink. Apart from the occasional rust that's inherent in our pipes, I've flushed up nothing nasty. Seems to me there's nothing crowding the water lines. I've called several plumbers who say perhaps loss of pressure is a function of the municipal water supplier. I find that hard to believe. Any insight you can give is much appreciated.
A. The plumbers you have called may be young ones with no experience with the faucets of the 1950s. It sounds as if you have an old-fashioned kitchen faucet, the type with a rubber or plastic washer instead of the more modern faucets with cartridges. As hot water runs through the faucet, it causes expansion of the metal parts and the flow of hot water becomes restricted to a trickle. The solution is to replace the faucet with a more modern one.
Q. We have a 19th-century farmhouse (with attached "L" and barn) in Northern New Hampshire. About 15 years ago, we replaced the clapboards on the east end of the house, the north, south and west sides of the "L" and the front of the barn. The other three sides of the barn were resided with wood shingles. The buildings sit on a hilltop in the open air, surrounded by mowed lawns.
At the time of installation, all new siding was stained with an oil-based, solid-color stain (white). We now know this was a magnet for mildew, and each year, until frost, the buildings looked horrible as the mildew flourished. The paint place suggested restaining with a mildewcide added to the oil-based stain. We did this, and it was better for a bit, then mildew flourished again. About nine or 10 years ago, we stained again, this time using a latex, solid-color (white) stain. This worked well and looked great for six years or so. As it began to need another staining, we hired a local contractor to stain the buildings again and to paint the remaining three sides of the main house that still have original clapboards. The contractor folks power-washed all sides of the buildings and proceeded to paint and stain.
The following spring, I noticed a couple of large bubbles on the stained clapboards on the east end of the main house and called the contractor to ask him to look at it. By the time he stopped by, the bubble had flattened, and he felt it was of no concern. By the next summer, the bubbles were visible on all stained surfaces. But by the end of that summer, sheets of stain were falling off.
An employee at a paint store (not involved in any of this) is of the opinion that not enough time was allowed after the power washing for the siding to dry thoroughly. I'm not sure what happened, but it is a huge mess. The store that sold the stain says the contractor should have primed all sides with an oil-based primer first. Now that store is advising scraping all surfaces and using only oil-based stain. I'm concerned about the mildew factor. The good news is that the remaining three sides of the house with their painted original clapboards look great. Should we be painting the new siding? We thought stain would be less likely to peel. How should we direct our contractor to proceed?
A. As I understand it, all the new wood was installed raw and stained with the white solid-color stain. If the oil stain had a linseed-oil base, it is indeed food for mildew spores. Unless mildew is completely removed, it will grow through additional coats of paint or stain. Please be aware that solid-color stains are thinned paints and therefore do not last as long; if you got six years out of the latex stain, you did very well. The paint store is correct in advising you that the wood was not dry enough when the contractor applied the stain. The stain bubbling indicates that there was excessive moisture in the wood. If the contractor applied a latex stain, it can be put on when the wood is damp but not wet. If the wood were wet, no oil-based primer would stick to it, so that advice is only good if the wood is thoroughly dry. But an oil-based primer can be applied over latex stain or paint, as it bites well. You should definitely remove all loose paint by pressure-washing and scraping. Once you are down to bare wood, prime it with an oil-based primer such as Cabot Problem Solver, followed by one or more finish coats of a quality latex paint; a 100 percent acrylic copolymer should last 10 years or more if the preparations and priming are done correctly.
• Henri de Marne's column appears Sundays. He was a remodeling contractor in Washington, D.C., for many years, and is now a consultant. Write to him in care of the Daily Herald, P.O. Box 280, Arlington Heights, IL 60006, or via e-mail at henridemarne@gmavt.net.
© 2008, United Feature Syndicate Inc.