Brooklyn Limestone

Admitting defeat.

I am one of those people who feels nothing is ever done right if not done myself. So when it came to stripping the scary old man winter face newel post on our parlor floor, I figured this was the kind of job that I should do myself. I didn't want the carving to get destroyed by rough scraping that didn't care about the finished product as much as I did.



So after my great experience peeling the banister with Peel Away, I figured this project shouldn't be too difficult.



I set my stool down in front of this thing and got to work. As I came to learn, Peel Away works wonderfully on smooth surfaces but anything with this sort of detail was a totally different story. Instead of being able to wipe the paint off, it had to be picked away at piece by piece. I did multiple coats of stripper and countless hours in a respirator over several precious weekends. And after all that, I got this:



More coats, hours with tiny plastic picks and a box of rubber gloves later, I was still left with this



Really disappointing. After spending so much time on it and not getting the results I hoped for, I just couldn't stand working on it anymore. I admitted defeat and moved on from the hope to get this thing clean.

Fast forward to working with our contractor, we asked him to see if he could strip the post for us. I wasn't sure what to expect but I kept fingers crossed that it would survive.



And it did! Turns out that my weekends were all for nothing because our contractor got this thing done in just a couple of days! Im sure it was a lot of elbow grease for the guy working on it but chalk this one up to being better left to the pros. Lesson learned.