Rustic Workbench

Anyone that has taken on the task of stripping paint from furniture or woodwork knows that it can be a daunting and sometimes messy task.  Commercially available paint strippers can also be expensive.

There is a huge array of paint strippers on the market that range in cost from expensive to very expensive.

It is easy to make your own home-made paint and finish remover with common ingredients that cost next to nothing.

To make your own stripper all you need is:

  • 1-pound household lye
  • 2-4 boxes of common cornstarch
  • 2 gallons of warm water
  • 1 five gallon plastic bucket
  • a long sleeve shirt
  • eye protection
  • thick rubber gloves
  • a long wood stir stick

Before working with lye please make sure that you have on long sleeves, rubber gloves and eye protection.  You do not want to splatter this stuff on you.  If you do make sure you immediately rise off any skin that has come in contact with the lye mixture.

Use a five gallon plastic bucket.  Not that you are going to make five gallons of stripper its that you want to make sure you have high sides and enough room between the top of the mixture and the lip of the bucket so as to reduce the chance of spill or splatter.

Using a clean plastic five-gallon bucket (do not use anything metallic), pour in 2 gallons of warm to hot water.  Very carefully dissolve the lye.  For two gallons of medium strength stripper you should figure on starting with 2 oz of lye per gallon of water.  For a stronger stripper carefully dissolve additional lye 1 oz at a time and test for effectiveness.

If you would like to thicken the mixture you can add cornstarch.

To thicken with cornstarch – using a separate pail of water, dissolve enough cornstarch until the water is milky.  Slowly and carefully add and blend the cornstarch to the lye mixture until you have the desired consistency.

Be sure to test the stripper on an inconspicuous area as this type of stripper can darken some hardwoods.  Be careful as you apply and make sure to wear protective clothing and eye-gear.

Use a natural bristle bush to apply.  Apply and let set – it shouldn’t take long for the paint to begin to lift.  Bearfort Lodge Signature Black Bear Paw PrintRinse the area thoroughly before refinishing.

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Fairly recently I had built an arbor for the garden using branches cut from the surrounding property. Within less than one season the hastily made and rickety structure came crashing down into a heap of debris during a thunderstorm. Lesson learned.

scraping off the barkI wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. This time I would build it to withstand such storms by using logs.

A neighbor who had been clearing some additional land for pasture had the perfect timbers. The four to five inch diameters would provide a bit more heft and if properly fastened together, prepared and preserved the arbor should stand for quite some time. I hope.

Last time I built the arbor I had left the bark intact. Not this time. Leaving the bark on, although aesthetically pleasing, provides the perfect environment for insects and moisture to collect and deteriorate the wood. I had violated log building 101 – remove the bark.

read more log arbor

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Remodeling a Small Bathroom in a Log Home Part 19: Making A Custom Exposed Shower System

Rustic Workbench

After having made my own copper sink and faucet as discussed in the last post I had to now make my own exposed copper shower system. Since the wall is made of logs there is no place to hide the plumbing so if it has to be exposed then I may as well play it [...]

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Remodeling a Small Bathroom in a Log Home Part 18: Custom Sink Faucet

Rustic Workbench

After seeing the unique copper faucets for the sink and shower from Sonoma Forge in the last post and taking cues from the exposed copper plumbing throughout the Lodge I thought that I had zeroed in on what I would use for the new bath. The Sonoma Forge faucets were indeed beautiful for this application [...]

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Remodeling a Small Bathroom in a Log Home Part 17: Designing Custom Faucets

Rustic Workbench

In the last installment I had beat the crap out of a copper sink to customize it for the new bathroom. Now that I had sufficiently distorted the sink to my liking it was time to turn my attention to custom faucets. I wanted something completely different. Throughout the lodge – being that this is [...]

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Remodeling a Small Bathroom in a Log Home Part 16: Hammering the Copper Sink

Rustic Workbench

Since I had finished up on hanging the lights. I could turn my attention to preparing the custom copper sink. I had looked around for an appropriate sink for the main part of the bathroom and had considered using a boulder that had been honed out however I didn’t find that which I sought. The [...]

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Remodeling a Small Bathroom in a Log Home Part 15: Hanging Elk Antler Lighting

Rustic Workbench

With the custom copper bathtub installed I was free to take on a more simple task. Now it was time to hang the antique elk antler lights that I had rewired in an earlier post. The lighting had been discovered as an architectural salvage place and needed to be completely rewired which only took a [...]

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Remodeling a Small Bathroom in a Log Home Part 14: Placing the Copper Bathtub

Rustic Workbench

Having completed soldering all the seams of my custom copper bathtub, I was now faced with the most dreaded part of the project: fitting the newly made copper bathtub into place. I had build both portions separately – independently of each other relying solely on the figures and calculations that I had scribbled across numerous [...]

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Remodeling a Small Bathroom in a Log Home Part 13: Soldering the Copper Bathtub

Rustic Workbench

After completing making all the tabs, bends and seams for my custom copper bathtub in the last installment, now came time to solder all the seams together making it water-tight. If all of my calculations are correct, when finished I should be able to drop the copper down snugly into the bathtub base. I had [...]

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Remodeling a Small Bathroom in a Log Home Part 12: The Copper Bathtub Layout

Rustic Workbench

I had finally worked out in my head how I was going to make the custom copper bathtub while finishing up installing the tub base in the last installment of this project. When I first started the bathroom remodeling project I had decided that the best way to move forward was to make a model [...]

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Remodeling a Small Bathroom in a Log Home Part 11: Installing the Copper Bathtub Base

Rustic Workbench

After the final glaze had been applied to the plasterwork above the tub in the last installment, I had to turn my attention to placing the tub base into its final position. The 6′x3′ tapered box would be attached to the floor and side walls and padded with vinyl underlayment to as to provide a [...]

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Remodeling a Small Bathroom in a Log Home Part 10: Preparing the Walls

Rustic Workbench

Still procrastinating on hammering out the copper for the tub I turn my attention to preparing the finish for the flat walls. Earlier I had made quick work of laying the backer board for the tile floor as described in my previous post but wanted a bit more time before I had to contend with [...]

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Remodeling a Small Bathroom in a Log Home Part 9: Preparing the Floor

Rustic Workbench

It was now time to prepare the floor not only for the tile, for which I still search, but so that I can place the superstructure for the copper tub which was built in the last installment. Laying the floor was actually quite simple. Long ago I had removed the ugly pink tile left over [...]

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Remodeling a Small Bathroom in a Log Home Part 8: Building the Bathtub

Rustic Workbench

It is now time to turn my attention to building the first part of my copper tub: the wood support. In the last post in this series I had finished up rewiring some old antique elk antler lights. Although I have made some small things out of copper including a counter top and sink for [...]

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Remodeling a Small Bathroom in a Log Home Part 7: Rewiring Elk Antler Lighting

Rustic Workbench

In the last installment I had run new wiring for my hanging elk antler lights as well as the under-floor radiant heat. Now it was time to rewire the antique antlers. Before I found the antlers I had looked at a number of different lights none of which I really cared for. At one point [...]

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Remodeling a Small Bathroom in a Log Home Part 6: Electrical Wiring

Rustic Workbench

After finishing with the insulation as described in the last post in this series, I needed to concentrate on running new electrical wiring from under the main part of the house under the existing bathroom floor, through the foundation. The new wiring would then need to run up behind the interior log wall where I [...]

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Remodeling a Small Bathroom in a Log Home Part 5: Insulating

Rustic Workbench

In the last step I had finished up the first cleaning of the logs now it became time to begin insulating the the stick construction walls and floor. The walls in had been previously insulated with wads of old newspaper which made great nesting material for mice but did little in the way of providing [...]

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Remodeling a Small Bathroom in a Log Home Part 4: Cleaning Logs

Rustic Workbench

Now that the weather has warmed up work has resumed on the remodeling of the small bath and shower installation. Previously we had demolished the old bathroom. The two stick frame walls have been insulated and covered in a plastic vapor barrier. The log wall shown here in the first photo has not seen the [...]

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Remodeling a Small Bathroom in a Log Home Part 3: Demolition

Rustic Workbench

Since coming up with the plan and building a model for the new bathroom as shown in Part 2 of this series, now came time to dig in and demolish the existing space. Tearing apart the old walls and plumbing was dirty work. The small space had once served as a men’s room when this [...]

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Remodeling a Small Bathroom in a Log Home Part 2: Designing a Copper Bathtub

Rustic Workbench

The shower attached to the small bathroom, as discussed in the previous installment, has been removed and the space opened up to its original 6 by 6 space. The narrow door as seen in this photo is only 19 inches wide and leads to the bathroom. The walls have been stripped of the cheesy press-board [...]

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