Panels part one

After carefully setting the birch panels for the rear bedroom and the hidden closet from the bedroom. on our back porch we prepared ourselves to refinish the panels. The trailer did not have that smoky smell of a chronic smoker but there was some evidence that a smoker lived in the trailer before us. From my days working maintenance for a major airline I remembered the tar and nicotine that corroded the skin in the smoking sections of the airplane before smoking was banned. So Holly and I thought it would be best to strip each panel and it lightly sand, then us marine spar varnish to seal the panels. We set up our work station in the hallway outside our apartment and proceeded to try various strippers with limited success. We needed to use a "green" product because of we were working in the dorm. None of the products we tried were very satisfactory. Although we were both impressed with the thickness of the varnish that was on the panels. If you refer back to the closing day post you will see that the panels themselves were in really good shape. We worked steadily on three different panels with varying levels of success. When we wet tested one panel the swirl marks and other residue of the striping process forced us to sand more vigorously. The original birch panels are not solid birch but a veneer. I was worried about sanding through the panels in places and Holly was losing her sense of humor about the project. This lead to a compromise that we will discuss next time.....