LESLIE: Suzanne in Pennsylvania has a paint removal question. What can we do for you?
SUZANNE: Hi, I’ve recently moved and the tile that goes around the border of the tile in the bathtub area is like a dark, kidney-bean color. And the edge that goes to the wall, they slopped a lot of paint on and I was wondering what I could use to clean it off without going into the wall area and creating a problem there.
LESLIE: Well, Suzanne, it doesn’t seem like – I mean it’s just on that one tile; it’s not something that I feel like you need some sort of chemical stripping agent. Have you tried to use a paint scraper or a razor blade?
SUZANNE: I’ve used a razor blade but the tile is curved and in some areas it’s more difficult to get it off. And since it covers a large-enough area, I didn’t know if there would be something that might be easier to do a neater job other than a razor blade or not.
LESLIE: Well, there …
TOM: Why not use a paint stripper; maybe one of the natural paint strippers?
LESLIE: Yeah, I mean there are several products out there. There’s one that’s – it’s come quite a long way and it uses a lot of natural materials. It’s called Peel Away and the one that uses the more natural of the materials is called Peel Away Smart Strip.
And now, what you would do is – it’s a very thick paste and you apply it to wherever the paint is that you want to remove and, in some cases, you put a paper over it to accelerate the stripping time; in other cases, you don’t have to. And then you would peel everything away and it gets you right down to that raw surface. So that’s probably a good one for this situation because it will be contained and it’s not something that you have to spray on or worry about running because this is really like gloppy – if that’s a word.
SUZANNE: OK, that sounds good. Thank you very much.
TOM: You’re welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
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