Stripping the Feet
The clawfoot tub we have is salvaged and in pretty good condition with a still good finish on it. Naturally, there has to be a "but" coming though.
BUT -- it only came with three feet.
Obviously that wouldn't do us a lot of good, now would it. Fortunately, there is a good architectural salvage place (Preservation Station) in Nashville that carries a lot of old house stuff. They have tons of tub legs and fortunately, my missing leg was a pretty common one (sort of). I have the decorative, claw version of a basic leg. The plain ones are easy to find. Apparently the others are not.
It's going against the back wall though, so I can live without the decoration on that foot -- and they even sandblasted the paint off for me.
But the other three legs needed a lot more help. I got three cheap plastic buckets at Home Depot (I wish I had been saving all the various food containers, but these were only $.88) and some Citristrip. My preferred strippers are Citristrip and Safest Stripper, but when it will do the job, I like Citristrip because it doesn't burn my skin as quickly and it smells some what better.
I dumped the stripper over the legs in the buckets, waited a few hours , scrubbed them with a stiff brush and hosed them off. Then I doused the legs again and repeated the process.
In the end, I was left with feet that are probably perfectly adequate for repainting. I'll probably take the wire brush attachment for our drill to them though to clean them up a bit more before calling them done.
BUT -- it only came with three feet.
Obviously that wouldn't do us a lot of good, now would it. Fortunately, there is a good architectural salvage place (Preservation Station) in Nashville that carries a lot of old house stuff. They have tons of tub legs and fortunately, my missing leg was a pretty common one (sort of). I have the decorative, claw version of a basic leg. The plain ones are easy to find. Apparently the others are not.
It's going against the back wall though, so I can live without the decoration on that foot -- and they even sandblasted the paint off for me.
But the other three legs needed a lot more help. I got three cheap plastic buckets at Home Depot (I wish I had been saving all the various food containers, but these were only $.88) and some Citristrip. My preferred strippers are Citristrip and Safest Stripper, but when it will do the job, I like Citristrip because it doesn't burn my skin as quickly and it smells some what better.
I dumped the stripper over the legs in the buckets, waited a few hours , scrubbed them with a stiff brush and hosed them off. Then I doused the legs again and repeated the process.
In the end, I was left with feet that are probably perfectly adequate for repainting. I'll probably take the wire brush attachment for our drill to them though to clean them up a bit more before calling them done.
