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House Painting Tips - Condition Your Skin While Removing Oil Base Paint
A special house painting tip that can save your hands. Find out how to remove oil base paint without harming the skin on your hands. In stead of dry skin irritated from chemicals your skin will be left soft and conditioned.
I found that after years of using solvent based hand cleaners in my house painting business that they sure can take a toll on the quality of your skin. Most of the solvent base hand cleaners contain mineral spirits. Anyone who has had much contact with mineral spirits know what it can do to your skin. They sure clean your skin well, but not without some damage to your skin. With the prolong exposure to these products, my hands started looking more like tree bark than smooth skin.
Solvent based hand cleaners did a pretty good job of removing oil based paint, but at the expense of poor quality skin. After developing problems with my skin, I switched to using citrus based hand cleaners and found that citrus based hand cleaners were an improvement. They actually cleaned my skin about as well as the solvent based cleaners. Citrus based hand cleaners were less caustic to my hands.
However, after a few years of using citrus cleaners, I became allergic to something in the cleaner. Perhaps it was the citrus extracts themselves. I don’t know for sure.
One day when painting around my home using oil base paint, I decided to try using baby oil to clean the paint off my hands. Why not try baby oil and see if it will remove oil base paint. Therefore, I applied baby oil to my hands and started rubbing the oil into my dry skin and found that the oil base paint was dissolving. I applied the baby oil 3 or 4 times to my hands and rubbed it into my skin before rinsing with water. Then I dried my hands very well and applied it one more time to remove any residual paint. When I was done, my skin was soft, clean, and felt smooth.
I have to tell you, using baby oil was a vast improvement over anything I had ever used before, and it’s all I’ve used for years.
Sometimes the simplest things sitting right under your nose turn out to be the best solution to your problem.
Remember these key points before using baby oil. Do not wet your hands before using baby oil. If you wet your hands first, the water will repel the baby oil rendering it useless. Be sure and apply the baby oil 2 to 3 times to your hands wiping with a dry paper towel between applications. When the paint is desolved, rinse with soap and warm water. Work the baby oil into your skin and within two shakes of a cat’s tail, you will notice the oil based paint will start dissolving. Wash and then dry your hands well. If you see any residual oil paint then reapply the baby oil.
Baby oil may not be as speedy as your solvent based hand cleaners, but a little more time is a small sacrifice to avoid having your skin look like tree bark.