I have used Smart Strip to strip about 5 layers of paint off the ceiling of my 500 sf carport, which I'm converting to living space. I have a midcentury post and beam style rancher with cedar tongue-in-groove decking and fir beams. It was a long process and took 2 separate applications because in our initial enthusiasm we applied the Smart Strip over too large an area and let it sit too long/dry out. We learned from our mistakes, scraped off what we could, and on the second go-round worked in small sections, prolonging the dwell time by covering the stripper with thin plastic. Dumond suggested this to me and it works just as well or better than the special paper they sell for this purpose. Smart Strip is the first and only stripper I have ever used and it seems a very benign product; I would hate to think of tackling this job with something toxic. However, it is still a lot of work to remove the paint, especially since we are working overhead - and we have all those V grooves to contend with as well! Scraping the softened paint with a carbide scraper was followed by scrubbing the residue with an assortment of stiff brushes and soapy water; wiping down; scraping out the remaining stripper residue from the V grooves after it had sufficiently dried; then going over everything with a palm sander. Having done all that, there were still some spots where we could not remove all the paint residue (i.e. a "tinge" remaining on the wood rather than solid paint) from the first coat of what was likely an oil-based paint, nor could we scrub out all the paint from knotholes, etc. So now I am staining the beams and decking (dark brown and warm grey respectively) with SW Woodscapes solid stain, which seems like a very good product. We have begun the stripping process with the cedar decking on the soffits and the exposed beam ends outside ... even more of a challenge when you're working in front of a wall of windows. I'm sure it will be worth it in the end ... whenever that will be. This has turned out to be as much a restoration as a renovation.

Yep! I ordered the Heritage package. I have been trying to get all of the old black & white photos in albums & this looked like it could be a big help. We're "doing" our family tree & it is so fun to get the really old photos out for display!!

i bought some more flowers for my wedding because our micheals has a VERY LIMITED supply of scrapbook materials i have more scrapbooking stuff on my dining room table than they have here in the whole dept at michaels. I just wish my local scrapbooking store did the coupon thing then i would be very happy because the store is huge and has everything in it i can spend hours in there. LOL

I agree. I love to ponder the mystery of life that takes a tiny tomato seed planted inside under lights on Super Bowl Sunday and turns it into a plant that is blooming in April and producing ripe fruit by late May or early June. If that is not a miracle, what is? (grin) Well, I guess seeing my beloved Dallas Cowboys in that Super Bowl Sunday game while I'm sowing seeds would be another miracle. Much of our acreage is heavily wooded and I marvel at the way the woodland replenishes itself with no help from us whatsoever. Most years, I rake up and pick up all the acorns and pecans in the yard and on the edge of the woodland closest to the house just to keep from having to mow down hundreds of tiny trees in the springtime after they sprout. I grow tons of flowers as well as veggies, fruits and herbs, and love them all. My garden is not a traditional row garden with neat, tidy rows of properly-spaced veggies, each in its own space. Nope. It is a crazy quilt of veggies, fruits, herbs and flowers mixed together in a wild explosion of color in raised beds. Every plant matters, so even when I am tempted to yank out an overly aggressive flowering plant just because it is encroaching on a veggie plant next to it, I almost never do. I just urge the plants to get along and play nice. I do sometimes cut back the flowering plants to reduce their size, but most respond by instantly putting out tons of new growth so it is one of those battles I can't win....but I don't want to win it either if winning means giving up the flowers. I haven't stepped foot in the garden for more than a minute or two for the last couple of months, having abandoned it when we got too hot and too dry for me to keep spending money on irrigation water, so it is a wild jungle now. I chose instead to funnel my time and energy into the remodeling of our kitchen, but I really have missed the garden. It is so snakey now that it has been smarter to stay out of it than to venture into it, but today I plan to go in there briefly to see what I can harvest. I just have to be careful to get back out of the garden before the sun warms up the environment enough that the snakes come out. Being healthy, well-watered up until the point that I stopped irrigating, and well-mulched, more garden plants have survived and produced than I had expected. I've been fighting snakes and coyotes in the yard something fierce though, and not winning all the battles.