How to Strip PaintHow to Safely Strip Paint

Garden fork Peach Crumble www.garden fork.tv Hey everyone! Today on garden fork, really, really simple, really kind of quicky garden fork, probably one of the shortest ones I have ever done. I am down in Brooklyn here today and everyone is gone. Everyone else is up in the country, at the house in Connecticut. There are no dogs, no horses, no other people. So, I am actually doing some painting down here. And I have to paint some of the doors in the apartment and as you can see, a bunch of our door hardware, is all painted over. And for years, it has kind of bothered me. I thought I really like to get the paint off those things. And I always thought I had used some sort of chemical paint stripper and I am kind of leery of that because it smells a lot and it seems like you do not want to breathe in that stuff too much. And then, I ran across this little how to thing in the web about removing paint from stuff like this like door hinges and door knobs, almost anything metal, in a really neat way. So I want to show you how to do that today. So the first trick is, we have got to get this thing off the door. And the screws are painted shut or painted so you can almost cannot see the screws basically. We are going to take the doorknob off, you can see here, I tried to pull some of the paint off already and was not very successful. And someone painted this house, this apartment red at one point. We painted it white. But there is like layers of red paint here. Anyway, just a quick little thing I want to show everyone and I thought I should just make a little garden fork video about it because I kind of stumbled upon this on the web and maybe you guys, would like to learn about it all right? So here we go. Step one, take this off. Somewhere under here, is a screw. So, I just want to carefully poke around. I can kind of see the slot, and there we go. Now, let us go and try to find the top one, and more of that red paint. Oh, this one is going to be easier I hope. That is a lot of paint. Doorknobs usually have one or two screws. They are usually at a right angle to each other that are holding the knob itself onto the doorknob assembly shaft. It is usually a square shaft that has little threads on it and then these go on so this one is not too painted over and it looks like there is only one screw. So I am just going to take that screw out, and we are going to take this guy off. This one, you are over 40. You have to have the glasses for when things are close. So that is my life. That is the story of my life right now. Me being the master of the obvious here, you want to make sure that when you take this doorknob off that you have not locked this door, and that you can actually get back out. And I know that it is obvious but maybe it is not, I do not know. Okay so the trick now is, we need to separate the plate from the wall. And it is clearly, it has been painted in. So I am just going to take my screwdriver and try and just try and scour a line somewhere without scratching up the hardware plate or doorplate, doorknob plate, is that what it is called, I do not know. There we go, there we go. Oh, and look at that. Look at all the old colors, that is wild. Okay so now we are now in the kitchen, and I am going to reveal the secret method, for getting the paint off your doorknobs and doorplates and hinges, and stuff like that. It is a crackpot. Believe it or not, this thing, besides cooking pot roast, or stews, or chili or whatever it is people make in these things and I guess I would like to start doing crackpot episodes soon. This will basically soak the paint off of door hardware, hinges, and stuff like that. It is really simple. I will show you how. Crackpot, some soap, then you take your hardware, fill it up with water. And it goes on, set this on low, and just let it go. I know I kind of like this cow. It has got a little map of the United States on here and of course, New York is big and the rest of the states are not. Okay, it has been about five, five to six hours, this thing has been bubbling away here. Do not crank it up to high. I put it on warm or low and it did pretty good. I think sometimes, it will take overnight. If you are going to do it for overnight, I suggest you take it, put it out in the garage or somewhere. I do not know. It just seems like a better idea out there. But let us see, what this does. Put on some nice gloves because your hands are going to get full of junk. Do not wear any clothes that you think might be valuable or you might want to use at a cocktail party or something. Let us see what happens here? Okay, the moment of truth is here. Oh wow! Oh, look at this! Is that cool or what? Look at that. That is amazing. Look at that. It just comes right off. And this is great because there are no chemicals. It is soap, and hot water, and a crackpot. So, we went from this, to this and we did not use any chemicals. I thought that was pretty cool. Rubber gloves, just am at a loss for words here. Just use some rubber gloves, you have got to use crackpot, go to a tag sale, maybe there is one in the basement you have not used in a bunch of years. I remember crackpots from the 70s, it was kind of a big deal and now they have big resurgence. So, try and find one that is an old one because you are going to get all gunked up and you can go from this, to this, which I think is really cool. All right, that is a quicky garden fork episode for you. Tell your friends about the show. Send us emails. Tell us what you think. And thanks for watching, right? Make it a good day. I will see you later.