remove parging?

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bostock

Member
Oct 27, 2010
136
Sharpsburg Maryland
Hi all - am I correct to assume painted parging inside a firebox (fireplace) is considered combustable? Setting up my F3 in there this weekend, thinking i should spend the week peeling that off...
 
Not necessarily. If you have parging in your fireplace, I assume it is 18th or 18th century. This was the standard fireplace finish for many years, typically a clay-based mortar mix spread over the stonework, then covered with a finish coat of plaster or whitewash. It was designed to hold up to direct flame contact.

Are you sure you're looking at paint, and not white wash? If paint, any chance the substrate (parging) can keep it cool enough to not burn?
 
yeah the house is 1790's - shallow fireplaces, all fireboxes are parged (except the deep cooking fireplace in the kitchen - exposed brick). I expect the parging itself will be original but It's paint we're looking at - dark brown - was painted about 3 years ago (before we moved in).
 
When I moved into this house, the fireplace in my avatar (summer kitchen) had already been stripped of its parging. The other (main kitchen) had a newer (1890's) brick firebox built inside the original stone and parged firebox. I started knocking the loose stuff off, with the intent to have it re-parged, but it came off so clean I decided to just have it pointed and leave it stone.

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/old-fireplace.88498/

To answer your question, it depends on your end goal. If you're set on keeping that parging, and you believe it is sound, I'd be going at it with a host of different scrapers to find what strips the paint most quickly with the least damage. If you think you might want to go down to bare stone (or brick) anyway, it's usually not THAT difficult to remove. It's a very messy job, though. Make sure you seal off and isolate the room where you're working. Also, consider getting a bagster or small dumpster, as your trash man will hate you if you try to dump that much material in the residential garbage.

Obvious lead warning... for what it's worth. If you're an old house owner, you've probably already made up your mind on that subject.

Post some photos, please!
 
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