My friend swore by using a heat gun to strip old paint. I tried it on my 1920s door.

He said it was foolproof and would save me hours of sanding. I bought a Wagner heat gun, set it up in my garage last Tuesday, and started on the top panel. The paint bubbled up fine, but then the wood underneath started to smoke and darken before I could even scrape it. He told me, 'You just have to move faster,' but the door had like eight layers of old lead paint that cooked onto the grain. Has anyone actually salvaged a door after a heat gun scorched it this bad?

2 comments

2 Comments

leo_harris8d ago

My buddy Dave tried the heat gun trick on his old porch railing. He ended up with these deep black scorch marks in the grooves that looked like charcoal. He spent three weekends trying to sand it out, but the burn went right into the pine. In the end, he had to use a wood filler to disguise the worst spots before repainting. The whole thing definitely took longer than just sanding would have.

lane.joel8d ago

Heat guns work best on thick paint layers, not bare wood.