Old Things Considered
Advice and trivia for the do-it-yourselfer
Ghislaine Darden

My home was built with beautiful wood work trim throughout all of the rooms. However, a previous owner painted all of the trim on the downstairs level of in my mission style house. What ìsafeî stripping methods are available to me? I have small children in the house, so Iím looking for a really safe method. --Barbara M.

If you are somewhat handy with a pry-bar, you are in luck! Consider the option of having the woodwork dipped at a commercial stripper. You can virtually eliminate the lead issues associated with stripping wood in your home, as well as save yourself the mess.

Here's what you will do:

1. First, develop a numbering or code system that gives each window and door a letter value, and each trim component a position and number. For example, your codes for window A might resemble this system: AL1 (window "A," left side, piece 1), AT2 (window "A," top trim, piece 2), etc.

2. Write your codes in marker on the painted trim components or pieces and photograph everything.

3. Photograph everything, showing the codes written in marker, and the assembled window frames and door frames. Always show an identifier in each photo so that you can keep the photographs straight!

4. Now you are ready to remove the trim. Purchase a variety of different sized pry bars from any good hardware store, and pry the wood away from their surfaces. The ìcasingî or trimwork is usually made up of several pieces of wood either glued or nailed together to make the profile of the wood casing.

5. Remove all the nails from your trimwork.

6. Etch each piece's code into its back side. You need to carve into the wood because when you remove the old paint, your marker codes will disappear too.

7. When all the nails are removed and each piece has been carved with your coding system, you are ready to bring all of your trim to a commercial dip shop. They will dip your trim in chemical paint remover under safe industrial conditions.

8. Once the old paint has been removed, you can sand and stain the trim, and re-install in their original locations, using your photographs as a guide to the placements.

Did you know?

Did you know that from the time of the ancient Greeks through the early 18th century, wine could not be aged? Wine was stored in amphorae or wooden barrels briefly before consumption.

By the early 18th century, glass-blowing had improved to the point of creating bottles with small bottleneck openings, allowing for the airtight storage of the liquid contents. The only remaining problem was how to seal the bottle opening. It would be the English who would soon import the wood from the Cork Tree from Spain, then fashion the cork into a reliable bottle sealer. Thus, entered in the beginning of wine storage or what we would consider, the ability to age wine. Alas, however, there remained a final problem to solve; how to remove the cork from the wine bottle.

The earliest "cork-screws" were made by blacksmiths who fashioned them after the early tools they crafted to clean musket barrels or to extract stuck bullets from the early muskets. Both tools served essentially the same purpose, extracting objects from a tight narrow passage. It was not until 1883, when German inventor Carl Wienke developed the "Butler's Friend," a folding corkscrew mechanism that exposed the screw when pried open from a protective shield, allowing for the wine bottle cork to be easily removed. It is this "modern" Wienke design that is still in use today. And who invented our old favorite doubled winged corkscrew that we all have in our kitchen drawer? That would be the Italian, Dominick Rosati, who was granted his patent in 1930.

Ghislaine Darden of Benner Street is an old house enthusiast and a Highland Park resident since 1984. Send her your antique and restoration questions to oldthings@hpmirror.com