Just a thought, but you might try scrubbing down the bad areas with a cleaner that includes bleach. We had some trim years ago that we thought was absolutely hopeless but an application of a bleach cleaner had an amazing effect. If the paint isn't peeling off, I am not sure why you would want to strip it if you intend to keep it painted.

If you do strip, Peel-A-Way works quite well, but it is a lot more expensive than using a heat gun!

The paint isn't necessarily peeling, but whoever put that last layer of oil based paint on clearly didn't sand or clean before he or she painted. There are glops of plaster or who knows what built into the wood. Heck, one original door has this huge visible area where someone presumably spackled and didn't sand or smooth it out.

Plus there are many areas where the paint has been chipped off to the wood, especially on the stairwell or in often used door frames. In many cases someone then came along and touched up the frame with an ill-matching latex paint.

Am I correct that I would either have to paint an oil based paint on top, or use an oil based primer first and then latex on top of that? It just seems that I am adding on awful lot of new layers of paint to baseboards that probably already have several layers.

Since this is likely my forever home, I just thought the long term solution was to strip at least some of the paint off. I'm not a masochist, though, but I just want what's best long term.

I will try your suggestion of a bleach cleaner. Maybe I can improve the look of whole rooms that way and leave them be.

Latex goes over clean oil paint just fie.

Spic n span or TSP type clean, with HOT water (insulated gloves under the rubber gloves hot).

Painting over dirty surfaces is a leading cause of paint adhesion failure, especially grease contaminated surfaces and latex paint(the often high gloss on old oil paint does not help adhesion).

If it is gloss it will need cleaning and some roughing up.

Unless you know there is no lead paint present, use a chemical etcher to rough the surface.

If you want the look of the old full gloss woodwork, SW has an acrylic latex full gloss paint that works very well.

It needs some Floetrol added to ensure good leveling (about 4-6 oz per gallon) but works very similarly to oil paint.

On our trim, the paint had chipped down to the wood. What I found when I used the heat gun to strip it was that the original finish was shellac. This made it a breeze to strip. That may be the case with your trim. Maybe you should test it. Use a putty knife in an area that is already chipped and see if you can get underneath the paint. If the paint separates from the wood, you may be able to strip it off with a paint gun pretty easily. You must use precautions when using the gun though. Proper mask, good ventilation, and don't burn the wood!
Diane

I agree with powermuffin. We have the same problem, and the only solution for me was to strip and repaint. The results are outstanding, as once I got to bare wood, I could fill in the dings and sand flat. I mainly started this because our windows were painted shut, and after opening them, the paint looked terrible. The downside is that it will take me many years to finish the house, as I can only strip paint during the seasons when the windows are open. I also recommend buying a very high quality thermostatically controlled heat gun, such as a Steinel, to allow you to find the minimum temperature that removes the paint without burning the wood or creating fumes.

My guess is that the old paint is likely oil-based lead paint. Be cautious if you do any scraping. Good luck1

This isn't a popular option with old house lovers, but if it's a very plain rectangular baseboard profile, you could just...

...replace it.

I was going to mention the same thing. After removing baseboards in my old house, I realized 2 things: how costly it will be to replicate them to fill in newly created gaps, and how many layers of yellowed, oil based paint have been accumulating. I'm seriously considering whether in this one room I can just replace everything.

I was going to mention the same thing. After removing baseboards in my old house, I realized 2 things: how costly it will be to replicate them to fill in newly created gaps, and how many layers of yellowed, oil based paint have been accumulating. I'm seriously considering whether in this one room I can just replace everything. Now I need to hunt for base that's close enough not to look out of character, and that might be a challenge.

Sorry guys - I relly didn't think my point was worth making 3 times! I kept trying to push through a server error message, which was obviously a mistake.

Hi,

I just did what you are contemplating. 1922 bungalow with 10" plain board fir baseboards. Since were were replacing the old fir floor (just plain worn out after 90 years and no more meat to resand) I carefully removed all the baseboards and trim. Using a good heat gun and scraper on tressels in the yard, 2 solid days of stripping had them down to clear wood. As someone mentioned, where they had been shellaced first, the 90 years of paint came of very easily. From there it was easy to sand (make sure you have a good RO sander) and spray primer and paint.
It is time consuming but it yields good results.
Because the wood is so old, it will be hard and brittle; be extra carefull not to split it when removing.
I could not imagine how awkward it would be to strip the boards in place!
Caspian

"Because the wood is so old, it will be hard and brittle; be extra carefull not to split it when removing. "

And pull any nail trough the back carefully.

Clamp Vice Grips on the nail shank, and then use a 'cat's paw' or 'wonder bar' to pry against the vice grips.

Any blowout will be in the back.
If the nail is near the end of a piece, pry from the longer side of the board.
Prying toward the short side can result in splitting.

An old 4 inch drywall knife makes a good tool to start removing small cross section wood.
You can hammer it between the wall and wood with minimal damage, then prey gently, or drive in another drywall knife behind the first.

A cats paw can ten be driven between the two knives.

If you are handy just about anything can be created with a router mounted in a router table with a good fence.

Amana used to make bits just to create old molding patterns.

Sometimes you need a way to tilt the router for a better match.

WoodHaven sells cradles that mount under the router tale insert and allow the router to be tilted.

When I needed 1880s brick mold the Amana bit was about 90%, but tilted 5 degrees it was perfect.

The 'historic commission' could not tel the old from the new under a coat of paint.

Even the scarf joints between old and new matched.

personally, i don't mind the look of 15 layers of paint on molding. i consider it a character element. you can work the paint so the newest layer looks good.

but i have stripped wood only to repaint. it looks good and you don't have to be nearly so fastidious with your stripping (eg getting out the dental tools). one coat of peel away (original formula) should do the trick.

also, even if you strip it down the new woodwork won't look like the old. it will be in too good of condition. set designers will often beat new wood with chains when they are designing a set that is supposed to be old. food for thought. if i was replacing a large section of baseboard, e.g., i would do something similar to give the wood an aged look. maybe that is insane, though. and where you are talking a totally different room it probably isn't so important.

Thanks for all the advice, everyone.

It turns out that they are fully replacing the molding on one window and a door frame in the existing house. This means that both my dining room and the kitchen are going to have old directly next to new. This honestly doesn't bother me that much, so I don't think we are going to have them replace the rest of the woodwork in those rooms. One reason is because we are out of money. The other is because I don't think it's fully necessary.

Probably what I will do is leave it as is in the rest of the house and focus my stripping and repainting efforts in those rooms. The dining room is truly the worst and always irks me when I am sitting in there.

I'm discouraged by those who say that it is a massive and unwieldy project if you leave the molding in place. I can't imagine removing it, mainly because it will wreck the plaster walls. The contractor, who is presumably much more skilled than I am, already messed up the plaster around the window molding he had to remove.

We had plaster work done already in the house, and I was pretty displeased with the results. You can definitely tell where the new plaster started. Maybe we just had bad luck, but I'm not sure how they match the "patina" of the old walls with the new.

Obviously I don't want to start a project that will take me eons to finish, but I just don't think removing it is an option for us.

Maybe I can adjust my expectations and be happy with the globs of paint.

Perhaps start with the bit that bugs you the most and keep the job small and contained. Doing floor molding in place isn't as bad as ceiling. (Isn't that like the most obvious statement ever?)

Just pick the smallest wall, mask everything really well, use a chemical stripper, go corner to corner, and see if you want to do the next one some other day. Maybe it's not that bad. Some stuff comes right off, or at least off enough to repaint.

Gee that sounds easy. I don't think it's that easy. But I think doing it in manageable discrete bits instead of trying to do all of it at once is how I'd try it.

And anyway, nobody will make fun of you for having new and old baseboards with different paint glob patterns. If they do, hand them the stripper.

In 2004, I began to remove the paint with peel away 7 on our 3 piece crown in place the dining room. (It had been painted purple with white 'splatters' = an 80's decorators idea to make the room "festive".) I managed to do about 3 ft at a time, that was about all the clean up manageable after work and dinner in the evenings. The whole project took me about 9 months to do slowly and included all the woodwork in the room and removing the textured ceiling back to the original plaster (never again on that!) You can do it to repaint, but its a messy slow project to take on.

Here is a link that might be useful: Stripping the dining room wood trim

Oh, I should have added that we're working on wood trim now as well, which involved removing the door trim, using stripper and scrapers, then sanding. Then we restain and finish. I like this way, and its looking very nice. When we strip the painted bedroom trim we'll use this method.