Hi ya
Has anyone used a heat gun to remove gloss paint of skirting boards etc
What do you use to protect the carpet and lino?
Can the carpet get damaged by the hot paint or heat off the gun?
Just thinking bit may be quicker than sanding all the wood work with a sander.
you move the carpet or lino right out the way, it will melt with the heat from the gun, but then again you would move the carpet out the way anyway even using a sander, which will make clean up much better and get rid of all the dust
Has anyone used a heat gun to remove gloss paint of skirting boards etc
Yes, Black & Decker electric
What do you use to protect the carpet and lino?
Mine has a small metal clip-on shield that fits over the nozzle; and/or a strip of metal (aluminium maybe?) approx 12" x 2"
Can the carpet get damaged by the hot paint or heat off the gun?
Yes; hot (melted) paint can stick to the carpet and needs to be picked off immediately - if nylon carpet, will definitely melt bits. Heat from the gun will melt or scorch within seconds, so use a shield and point away from the carpet as much as possible - but also keep clear of the wallpaper!
------------- What's the difference between a chicken?
Far better to remove carpet from harms way of both the heat from the gun and the melted paint being stripped.
The heat from the gun can reach 600C, which is sufficient to scorch even a pure wool carpet, and 5 or 6 times hotter than a synthetic carpet can withstand, they will just melt totally! The melted paint all too easily sticks to the carpet regardless of type and often requires cutting the pile to remove if you can't live with the stuck debris fragments.
The heat shields that fit to the gun nozzle kind of work until you accidentally lift it away from the work surface, then the hot air spills out onto regions you want to protect and does damage, also the heat shield itself will get sufficiently hot to melt synthetic carpets and even stick to the melted pile - a right mess!
The carpet in situ will also stop you from paint stripping to a good edge like the floor level, leaving a rather heat damaged ragged edge that will need sanding back to give you a nice paint finish when applying new paint.
As to being quicker than sanding, not so sure that's the case when all the care and protective measures are taken into account, AND you still have to sand and make good the wood before painting! It's a good way of removing very thick manky old paint or flaking paint, but overkill for sound paint.
Don't forget old paint (pre 1990's) can and often did contain LEAD, so either sanding or heat stripping should be done with suitable protective equipment being worn!
I have a friend who renovates properties properly before he then rents them. It may be quicker & easier to do as he does & just replace the skirting. You get bare wood that you can then do what you want with.
However, if you have old skirtings with moulding etc, I can only bring my door stripping experience to bear. And that experience (4 moulded doors & stripper & heat gun) meant that the 20+ doors that next needed stripping went off to DunkaDip (or something similar). Honestly, after a few feet of hot gun & scraper you’ll think there has to be more to life than this.
When I used a heat gun to remove gloss paint from the skirting board I used a steel bladed plasters float for protection. You turn the float upside down so the handle rests on the carpet and push the one side of the long blade tightly into the corner at an angle. You can then heat about 6 inches then move along in stages but the float blade will eventually get hot so it's best if you use two floats, one in use whilst the other one is cooling down. There is no other way to do it other than lifting the carpet or lino floor covering which ever it may be.
We used a heat gun on our skirtings and it worked well but there was no carpet down at the time. However, be really really careful if you have an old property. Two of my friends were taken to hospital with weird symptoms which turned out to be lead poisoning. They were using a heat gun to strip paint in their new (very old) house and the bottom layer of paint was old lead based paint which was affected by the heat and put lead into the atmosphere which they then breathed in and ended up very ill for a few days until the lead was cleared from their system.
Interesting about the lead poisoning. Not dissimilar to the days long ago when people got arsenic poisoning because of the fashion for a particular green paint on the walls, with arsenic in it.
Old skirtings can also have that dark stain which is a total pig to remove as it just melts then smears like treacle.
Quote: Originally posted by Fiona W on 26/1/2022
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Old skirtings can also have that dark stain which is a total pig to remove as it just melts then smears like treacle.
Tell me about it! ..... I've got a 1920's house where ALL the woodwork was 'Jacobean Dark Oak' originally, it's a mix of stain and lacquer that's near IMPOSSIBLE to remove. If you strip the lacquer back (by chemical, heat, or sanding and a LOT of effort!) you are still left with the dark stain which leaches out into new paint in irregular patches and ruins it, only solution is a couple of coats of stain block paint before final finish. The lacquer clogs 'sandpaper' in a very short time, so frequent fresh sheets/pads required. It all amounts to a lot of work/time/materials, so I always leave multi layers of old paint as a barrier wherever possible, a decent fine sand achieves a good final finish, albeit it a little brittle from the rather fragile old under paint!
as a pro decorator never use a heat gun in interior work unless well ventilated, also all burnable materials away from working area and if its floorboards then forget using it as hot bits can get bettween boards and combust, best use paint stripper but peel carpet away and ventilate room, also if dark boards are leeching then use aluminium primer coat first to prime it seals the wood.
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Topic: Heat gun
via mobile 25/1/2022 at 2:05pm
