Stripping the hutch

Why do people paint natural wood work?  Is the sight of beautiful, natural oak wood offensive to the naked eye? I know, I know it was in the name of change and progress in these old houses.  When my house was duplexed in the 1920s many changes were made.  The front open staircase was closed off, one set of the pocket doors were walled off, removal of a load bearing wall to make a room "larger" (frightening I know.  Luckily the house didn't fall down in the 90 years it was without this wall).  One other odd thing was that they removed the original hutch from the first floor and located it on the 2nd floor, closing in a closet.  I suspect they may have removed it to put a bathroom in on the 1st floor which is located behind the hutch, but then they placed a slightly newer and larger hutch back in the spot.  What on earth is this madness?!!! So while the original hutch that is on the 2nd floor has not yet been put back in the dining room (I have yet to do this room) I figured I would start on the paint stripping process.Should only take a few months right?  WRONG!!!!!! Turns out the stripping took me on and off 4 1/2 YEARS!!!!  I started by first taking the hutch apart.  I took the doors off, the shelves out, I removed the original bead-board backer because this was painted and would have been impossible for me to strip and bead-board can be purchased today in the same style.  So after it was all taken apart the "fun" began.  I used one of my favorite chemical stripper gels and put a thick layer on the part I started.  I started with the shelves since those I thought would be the easiest.  Left it on for awhile and the first ugly blue layer of paint came off, below that was white and then under that was a lovely psychedelic purple straight up from the 60s.  So still not down to bare wood.  So the next day I put on the next layer of stripper.  Off came the purple, then white and then the hottest neon pink I'd even seen was on.  Still not down to bare wood and something was not right.  Turns out below the pink was a layer of NASTY contact paper that came off mostly in 1mm x 1mm squares.  So it took about a week to get off all the contact paper since it came off in such small pieces.  After the contact paper came off I only had one more layer of white paint and down to bare wood!! I did it! To strip 5 shelves it took, oh maybe 3 weeks?  Success and that was just the east part.  I wish I would have taken photos of in process but I was so hateful in the time of paint stripping and I swore I would never do it again. LOL.  I won't bore you with any more details other than it was an awful process spent hunched over the hutch picking paint out of fine saw tooth dental molding to make sure there was not a speck of paint left.  So here is the before:

AND AFTER:

Now you can really see the grain, the beautiful details and it still had all the original hardware under all that paints.  Can't wait to get it back into the dining room!!!


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