I love it when my wife strips! I am referring of course to paint stripping. Not only paint stripping, but eco-friendly paint stripping at that. I refinished a door a while back and used some of the typical home improvement store “melt the flesh off your bones, carcinogenic, environmentally evil” paint stripper. After hours in a respirator and some googling of the main ingredients I vowed to find a safer alternative. Enter Removall products from Napier Environmental Technologies. My wife gave the stuff its first field test to remove a layer of paint from some vintage wood we have in our house. Application one was promising, but we did not put it on thick enough. We left a second very thick application on over night, and the stripper did a remarkable job. Oh, and the Removall did a good job removing the paint too! It is not as fast or as effective as the carcinogenic variety, but it is effective enough for me given the benefits it has: water-based clean-up, fully biodegradable, non-flammable, contains no TAPs or HAPs (Toxic / Hazardous Air Pollutants), low odor, will not burn skin, and my favorites, non-carcinogenic and non-toxic. The products are not cheap either, but when you factor in your health and that of the environment, I think it is well worth it. I just wished some of the major stores would carry it. I tracked mine down from a site call ProPaintStrip.com for about $50 for a one gallon size. I ordered the “220” formula which is brush-able (some formulas are for spray application only).
About Marc Lyman