How To Easily Remove Dry Paint From Unwanted Places
Did you forget to remove the hardware during a recent paint job and slobbered a bit of latex paint on the door knobs? Hinges? Strike plates? Or perhaps the painters before you did and now the paint has been dried on there for 10, 15, even 20 years? Instead of replacing the hardware so it looks clean, how about cleaning off the old paint easily and completely in just a few minutes instead?
For years Hubby has extolled the wonders of Goof Off, and I haven’t listened. Every single time there would be a drop of rogue paint left behind by painters, tar tracked on the floors after our hardwood floors were installed, or some glue residue remains left on glass or plastic after we removed a price sticker, Hubby’s answer was always: Goof Off.
Recently we repainted our entire Florida condo, including doors and the inside of closets. Hubby is a perfectionist (obviously the reason he married me), and doesn’t feel that a random dab of paint on hardware of floors enhances the ambiance of a place.
Since he did all the painting since our return (it was kind of useless for both of us to paint a door or try and squeeze into a closet), the task of cleaning the hardware fell to me.
Hubby handed me a container of Goof Off and a rag, and let me have at it.
Now, at first I was more than a tad skeptical. Sometimes Hubby’s “miracle” products require a lot of elbow grease, some sort of trick or just don’t work as well as he professes.
This time though? I gotta say he was right.
If there was only a stray, single layer of paint, the Goof Off dissolved the stray paint on contact. If there was build up (and some of it was up to an 1/8″ thick!), I had to rub a bit harder or apply 2-3 times.
The goof off worked wonderfully!
The hardware is original to the building (late 80s-early 90s), and I really liked it and was glad we could keep it. All the hardware for each door took me well under 10 minutes to clean up with the Goof Off – I spent more time hunting down a rag than I did cleaning the dried paint! In all I removed paint from nine inner door knobs and their accompanying hardware, and spent just a little over an hour doing it. (We did buy new hinges though.)
So, Hubby’s trick to easily remove dried on latex paint? Goof Off – it works.
● Disclosure: the links in this post may be affiliate links.
● If you enjoyed this post, be sure to sign up for the Ann’s Entitled Life weekly newsletter, and never miss another article!
● For more Ann’s Entitled Life renovation posts, click here.
Barbee says
Oh, I NEED that.
I assume you get it at Home Depot/Lowes- but is it expensive?
Thanks for the post.
I NEED that. Now. 🙂
Ann says
He definitely bought it at Home Depot, and no it isn’t expensive at all.
Ann
Judy Rhoades says
The way without chemicals, water in a crock pot.
Ann says
That post is coming up soon, Judy, but it is not a method for slightly sloppy paint, or if you only have a few pieces with paint to remove, or if you don’t want to remove the hardware. The crock pot method is for BIG paint removal jobs.
Ann
ST says
Any tips for removing dried latex from hardwood?? I’ve broken a few fingernails scraping paint from the floor with little luck. A thin layer always remains!
Ann says
A credit card or plastic scrapper should save your nails. You can try softening larger blobs with a hair dryer before scraping – softer is not always a good thing, so use your best judgement.
Occasionally rubbing alcohol (the 70% strength) or goo gone (citrus based) if the plastic-edge method doesn’t work. Just be very, very certain you aren’t removing any of the polyurethane on top of the floors. I’ve refinished a lot of wood in my time, and there are now eco-friendly citrus based paint removers, so do use caution with the goo gone as citrus is powerful enough to strip wood. And the rubbing alcohol is very capable of eating your finish, so I’d only use it on the end of a q-tip, and switch to the plastic edge (and discontinue the rubbing alcohol). I’d say the rubbing alcohol is a last resort.
Ann
Shell says
Good to know, thanks. I did a search and Amazon sells it for $4. Nothing like a good product that is cheap too!
Ann says
Every once in a while, Hubby’s shortcuts and products work, Shell! I like to share when they do.
Ann
Jenelle says
The goof off is difficult to remove paint from hard to access places such as the door locks and hardware pictured, unless perhaps you remove the hardware first before applying the goofoff to it. I tried using it on my doorknobs and locks and first of all, it did not immediately remove the paint smears which were latex pain less than 24 hours old, and secondly, while the hardware was on the door, even using a q-tip I could not get right to the edge of the hardware without also touching the paint on the wood. Also, be aware that goof off also makes a PAINT STRIPPER which is not the same as the oopsie remover–the paint stripper is extremely caustic and burns like a live coal if it gets on your skin, and does not immediately stop burning even when water is applied to your skin!!!
nancy simms says
Love this ! I dreaded cleaning off layers of dried old paint from doors ….Thank you for a nifty answer to
a lot of work !
Teri says
Painters got latex paint on my old hinges that I had spray painted with rustoleum oil brushed bronze paint which is a oil based paint. Will the goof off take the latex off without taking off the rustleum paint?
Brenda K says
It just occurred to me to try using Goof Off to remove the last traces of grotty paint glopped all over vintage door hardware after I had taken the door off/outside and got most of it off with a heat gun. Glad to have found your post confirming this will likely work well enough to justify filling my house with nasty fumes. Thank you!