What would this fireplace have looked like?

[phil]

hopefully the house is still standing and hubbie is no wiser


since Im putting up 1/4" drywall over the cracked and wallpaper covered plaster around my living room fireplace I decided i could fit it better if I could remove the super ugly tile the previous owner stuck all over the brick. I started pounding away at it and broke the ones off where it fits to the wall behind. the good news is that it seems that once I get that off, I "think" I can get the mortar remaining off with water, it seemed water soluble and that kind of surprised me.

I took the mantle off the top and it appears it might actually be the original 2x8 that sat on top but whatever it is someone wrapped it in thin wood. I'll pull their thin wood off just out of curiosity.

what I don't know is what is on the floor in front. would they have stuck the tile down to the flooring or would the brickwork somehow have been in front? sometimes the fire spits so I don't like carpet but that's going to go away to the dump once my drywall is finished. I will have to get more tile off to see but it looks promising. how close would the wood flooring normally come to the firebox? it seems like it needs some tile there or the wood floor would get burnt from the spatter of the fireplace. If there was tile there it's gone and it doesn't seem to sit higher than the flooring. Maybe Ill just need more appropriate tile.

Hopefully I don't' wreck the brick getting the tile off but I think actually the best way to remove it is to hit it really hard with a small hammer. I'm just using a really tiny ball peen hammer so as to not shock the brick and crack it. this minimizes the blows but you need to hit it with a pretty good impact to crack it. I think this is more about the speed of the hammer than how heavy it is , anyway ots working. It seems once it's cracked if I keep beating on the stuff it gets to the point where it just falls away.

for now I got the back edge clear so my new drywall can be that much closer to the brickwork. It had a bit of trim trapped between the new tile and the wall and I took that out..

if original is just raw brick I think Ill just try to keep it like that. Probably lots get covered over as it isn't the most fantastic feature but it might as well not be covered in 70's floor tile Ill try to get a picture. mine is like yours but my tile looks even worse than your white paint.

it's my first time using the 1/4" drywall but I can see the plaster is all cracked and I know it's got drywall in there from floor to half way up. The plaster has wallpaper over it and it's rotten and painted so no way it's worth trying to restore that plaster. If I did everything below eye level is just a rough scratch coat as it had wainscot originally. Maybe in time Ill do more wainscot but to get the room fixed up , for now I m just going to make it flat and clean.

that old painted over wallpaper and cracked plaster can stay right where it is.

Phil

[Texas_Ranger]

linseed oil soap? is this a product you are buying or is it a creation from a recipe? interesting !

I bought it, made by the same company that produces my linseed oil paint. Maybe Murphy Oil Soap (original) works the same, I'd buy a bottle and give it a try with some small painted object. If it doesn't take off the paint you can still use it for cleaning.

[Mick_VT]

linseed oil soap? is this a product you are buying or is it a creation from a recipe? interesting !

I bought it, made by the same company that produces my linseed oil paint. Maybe Murphy Oil Soap (original) works the same, I'd buy a bottle and give it a try with some small painted object. If it doesn't take off the paint you can still use it for cleaning.

IIRC Al Fortunato said that Murphy's contains silicones, so should not be used on something you are about to refinish

[Texas_Ranger]

linseed oil soap? is this a product you are buying or is it a creation from a recipe? interesting !

I bought it, made by the same company that produces my linseed oil paint. Maybe Murphy Oil Soap (original) works the same, I'd buy a bottle and give it a try with some small painted object. If it doesn't take off the paint you can still use it for cleaning.

IIRC Al Fortunato said that Murphy's contains silicones, so should not be used on something you are about to refinish

*ugh* that would be nasty! Their web site doesn't mention anything about it.

http://www.murphyoilsoap.com/products/original-oil-soap

[Lily left the valley]

I bought it, made by the same company that produces my linseed oil paint. Maybe Murphy Oil Soap (original) works the same, I'd buy a bottle and give it a try with some small painted object. If it doesn't take off the paint you can still use it for cleaning.

IIRC Al Fortunato said that Murphy's contains silicones, so should not be used on something you are about to refinish

*ugh* that would be nasty! Their web site doesn't mention anything about it.

http://www.murphyoilsoap.com/products/original-oil-soap

Oh, it does, you just don't know the chemical jargon. I don't either, which is why I like having the internet so I can learn stuff. For what it's worth, I checked the label of my own bottle to see if more was listed than the site you linked, and all it says is "Biodegradable and phosphate free".

Sodium Tallate is soap. According to wiki:

Many commercially available soap molds are made of silicone or various types of plastic, although many soapmaking hobbyists may use cardboard boxes lined with a plastic film. Wooden molds, unlined or lined with silicone sleeves, are also readily available to the general public.

So it's not clear which variant they are using in Murphy's. However..

Searching for Trisodium MGDA brought up a result that only opened a PDF, and I'm having a hard time linking to that source here. But here's what I found after feeling like a dummy not understanding most of what was on the fact sheet (bolding emphasis mine):

The excellent ecological and toxicological properties of the Trilon M types have regularly been confirmed in a wide variety of studies. BASF therefore recommends the Trilon M types as replacements for other, less environmentally friendly complexing agents such as phosphates, phosphonates, zeolites and silicates, etc. BASF’s team of experts is always pleased to give advice on adapting formulations.

Now that part might mean that they used to use silicates (and therefore silicone), but they have since changed the ingredients.
It seems that this was developed with the intent to use with the "friendlier" acrylates instead. (I may be remembering my chemistry wrong, but I am fairly certain acrylates are carbon based and not silicone.)

The Trilon M types can be used to boost the action of poly acrylates and phosphonates in inhibiting scale formation. They can enhance the overall performance of scale inhibitor formulations.

Apparently that study had to do with finding out what worked best to remove calcium carbonate scale, but the important part is poly acrylates. From wiki:

Poly(methyl acrylate) (PMA) is a hydrophobic synthetic acrylate polymer. PMA, though softer than polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), is tough, leathery, and flexible.

I tried to look up that long ingredient since I was already on a "look stuff up" roll, lauramidoprophyl dimethylamine, and it's apparently one of many names for that ingredient. From some of the search results I found, it is present in a lot of cosmetics (as in for human beauty aids). It's apparently an amidoamine, which I had to look up to understand better.

Amidoamines are a class of chemical compounds that are formed from fatty acids and diamines. They are used as intermediates in the synthesis of surfactants, such as cocamidopropyl betaine (CAPB), some of which are used in personal care products including soaps, shampoos, and cosmetics. Amidoamines can also serve as curing agents for epoxy resins.

Patch test studies have concluded that most apparent allergic reactions to products containing CAPB are more likely due to amidoamine.

Epoxy resins are polys again, so still no evident and obvious sign of silicates. If I could find more info on the exact type of tallate they used, perhaps that would be the deal breaker.

Ok, enough geeking from me. Sorry I couldn't be more specific as to which soap variant. But if Al says there is silicone, I believe him although I hope that perhaps Murphy's has moved on to the acrylates given what I found about the Trisodium MGDA. I still use it to clean brushes myself. I started doing that when I was studying tech theatre in college. My grandfather, I found out later, used to do the same, and he was a union painter.

[phil]

perhaps it's related to washing soda. You know that arm and hammer stuff that you can add to your wash to make the detergent work better? If you dissolve that in water it will take paint off.

I think what most soaps usually do is lower the surface tension of the water, that's oversimplified I know.

I'm no chemist but you could try experimenting with it, especially for like boiling paint off metal parts. Its easy to get and cheap too.

unfortunately a lot of chemical companies won't divulge their "trade secrets" but a lot of the time you can glean info from the MSDS sheets and any chemical supplier has to provide them.

if you look to old books they often lay out recipies,

how about caustic soda? is that related?

this old DR chase's recipie book has lots of cool stuff like that. some of the ingredients I have never heard of. I wouldn't use the medical section but it's fun to read. for a toothache it says to put turpentine on it and then pack it with opeum and things like that. I just looked up a poison for rats and it calls for squills and bacon. It seems to be a plant. back in the day you could get lots of ingredients from drug stores. some of the recipes are still valid and it would be neat to note all the ingredients down for certain things and then research the name they use today for the same ingredients.

https://archive.org/details/drchasesthirdlas01chas

[Texas_Ranger]

The stuff about silicone moulds is only related to soap bars, not to liquid soap products - why'd you need a mould for a liquid? Besides, we're talking about stable moulds, not liquid/goopy silicone that could cause trouble in the finished project. What they're talking about is like silicone muffin forms - there's no silicone in the muffins either.

Not well-versed enough in chemistry to know much about the silicates but according to Wikipedia silicone isn't strictly a silicate. Judging by the Wiki article on silicates I can't see why they'd be an issue for wood finishes because they're essentially minerals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicate_minerals

I do know that some cleaners and refinishing products contain pure silicone for surface protection or whatever, for example I've seen an old tin of floor paste wax that explicitly boasts silicone for shinier, more durable floors. That would definitely be nasty because it wouldn't only keep water and dirt off you wood surfaces but also any future finish. Apparently floor refinishers HATE tilers because they tend to spread silicone caulk everywhere and keep the floor finish from sticking.

[Lily left the valley]

Texas, when I start thinking about the science behind products, it does get overwhelming. e.g. (and I'm stretching for the sake of an example here, not stating from fact) If silicon tubing for the liquid could leach, but only if the product was x level of caustic, and only after so much use of x tube and so on. But there's only so much I could glean to work from, which is what I posted.

As I said, if Al says it has silicone, I believe him over the limited research I managed. I was only wondering if they had possibly changed the formula for exactly the reasons both you and he have said silicone is so bad in such a case. They wanted a product that better suited those who didn't want it. Thinking back on it now, I guess they'd have slapped some bold typed label on it saying, "Now without silicone!" or some such if they did.

[phil]

I think silicone is used in a lot of products without listing it. even very small trace amounts cause fish eyes when refinishing. The problem is that due to trade secrets the manufacturers wont' list the ingredients properly. it's not poisonous for example Pam spray. I think the only safe route is to not use pre packaged wonder products. I looked up pledge which was advertised for use right on furniture, but they only have a partial list of ingredients.

"While they aren't disclosed, the remaining ingredients also must meet our strict standards and be approved as part of our fragrance palette in order to be used. "

http://www.whatsinsidescjohnson.com/us/ ... emon-clean

It's really hard to tell what has it or what doesn't. If I even suspect something has it I try to get rid of it. I had to talk to my daughter in law who was spraying something in the bathroom that made the floor weirdly slippery. Some hair product.. It took some explaining to kindly ask her to get the stuff out of the house. Furniture refinishing of course wasn't on her mind when she started spraying the stuff around. how do you control situations like that? if you have teenage daughters I bet they have lots of beauty products that contain it, and so it goes on the floor and gets tracked all over your floors. Its very hard to detect. so far as I know it's odorless, colorless, and trace amounts produce this super slippery surface that can plague refinishing jobs.
I had a girlfriend that used to use that spam spray, she'd spray a pan and get some on the floor and it made the floor super slippery. I bet most of us have it in our homes and don't even know it.

such a small percentage of the population is concerned with refinishing furniture so I don't think it's really a concern to the manufacturers.