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Dude called me out for grabbing rusty furniture, now I check for lead paint first
I used to just snag any old cool-looking chair off the curb near my place in Philly, but last month a guy at the transfer station pointed out that pre-1970s stuff often has lead paint and said I was 'bringing poison into my house.' He showed me a pic of his test kit turning bright pink on a vintage dresser and I realized I'd been totally clueless. How do you guys quickly check if something is safe to sand or refinish without buying a whole testing lab?
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jakep241mo ago
Actually, the guy at the transfer station was mostly right but a little off on the date. Lead paint was banned for residential use in 1978, not pre-1970s. So you gotta look out for anything made before that year, not just the really old stuff. I learned this the hard way when I sanded down a 1976 nightstand and got a big pink spot on my test swab.
The quickest way to check without a lab is to buy a pack of lead test swabs from Home Depot or Lowes. They cost like 10 bucks for a pack of 8 or 10, which is way cheaper than a hospital bill later. You just rub the swab on the paint for 30 seconds and if it turns pink or red, you know it's bad. That's really all you need. You don't need to test every single piece of wood either, just focus on old paint layers where you're gonna sand.
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paige5141mo ago
Took your advice and grabbed a pack of those swabs from Lowes last weekend. Tested an old dresser I was refinishing from the 60s and sure enough, it lit up like a Christmas tree. Saved me a lot of trouble because I was about to start sanding it down without a mask or anything. Your tip about just testing the layers you're gonna mess with is solid too, no point swabbing the whole thing. I ended up just using a chemical stripper instead of sanding and it worked fine, no dust flying around.
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