L.J., Ipswich

A. Stripping the doors presents a problem, particularly since you know there is lead paint present. You can't sand the doors, and you are not supposed to remove such paint with a hot-air gun, although you might be able to do it outdoors, saving the scraped bits of paint for proper disposal, and wearing a proper mask while heating and scraping. Two good things about using a hot-air gun -- outdoors, of course -- are that you can regulate the heat to prevent it from smoking and you from breathing the fumes; and second, the heated and scraped bits of paint tend to harden when they cool, making disposal easier and a neater all-around job.

Short of that, or rather beyond that, you could have the doors dipped, if dippers do dip lead-painted items.

If you are able to scrape everything off, or the dipping removes all the paint, you could stain and varnish the doors instead of painting. If you do paint, the doors will be in good shape to do so. If you go to that much trouble, it might be nice to stain and varnish the doors for an interesting effect.

Q. I used Safe-Strip without budging the antiqued surface of several bureaus. What will take that old finish off; it is paint and a glaze of some sort.

G.L., Canton

A. Most finishes will yield to a chemical paint remover containing methylene chloride. It's toxic, corrosive and abrasive, but effective. The Safe-Strip does not contain methylene chloride, making it safer to use but slower, and, in your case, not effective at all, unless you didn't give it enough time to work.

There might be another way to avoid the methylene chloride: Try something new; it's called CitriStrip and is citrus-based and safer, and its makers say it is effective.

If that doesn't work, a hot-air gun should. Use it outdoors or in a safe room; using a hot-air gun indoors can be hazardous. One good thing about a hot-air gun is that, while it softens the paint enough to remove it, once it is scraped off, it cools off and hardens, making it easy to clean up. No sludges as from the chemical removers.

Finally, sanding to the bare wood will do nicely, but it is a lot of hard work and you run the risk of taking off more wood than you want to.

One thing about old finishes like yours: If the paint is milk paint, standard removers will not work. Milk paint is an old-fashioned paint (with a milk base) used years ago. You can still buy it; purists generally use it to achieve a Colonial look. Sanding will remove it, and so will the hot-air gun, but here is a final way:

Try Yankee Powder Paint Stripper, made by Marblehead Chemical Co. of Natick. Call (617) 653-0940.

Q. I am stripping some of the paint from my woodwork and plan to stain it. Is there any easy way to remove the paint and do I have to get all of it off in order to stain it? If I can't get all the paint off, and give up the idea of staining, how can I paint it?

M.R., North Attleborough

A. Let's get one thing straight. The Handyman knows of no easy way to do anything. Well, maybe, but it's only that some ways are just a littler easier than others, but still not easy. In order to stain your indoor woodwork, every trace of paint must be removed because penetrating oil stains will not cover or penetrate paint.

To strip paint, you can use chemical paint remover, including Peel-Away, but in all cases it is tedious work. And, being indoor work, it is difficult to keep the remover away from wallpaper, wall paint and other places you don't want it.

A possibly better and a little easier way is to power sand the paint. The drawback there is trying to sand edges of the woodwork next to the wall.

A third way is to remove the woodwork carefully so you don't break or split it. Then take it to an outdoor table where you can work with remover or sanding. You will be more comfortable that way and the work is likely to go faster. Be sure to keep track of the woodwork to make sure you put the right pieces back in the right positions. If your woodwork is plain and not historical, you could take it off and replace it with new pine woodwork.

If all this sounds discouraging and you decide just to repaint, sanding will help your project be a good one. You don't have to sand to the bare wood but sanding will reduce the gloss and roughen the finish, and smooth out any blemishes and areas where the paint peeled.

After sanding, wash with paint thinner and apply one coat of a latex-enamel undercoater. This is essential to success, because not only will the undercoater stick well to the woodwork, it will allow new paint to stick to it, without chipping. Finish off with an eggshell-finish latex wall paint. Eggshell finish is somewhere between flat and shiny, and is hard enough to be washable but flat enough to resist chipping.

Q. I am looking at some old houses to buy, but I notice that some have very dark woodwork finishes. Is there any way to lighten such finishes?

T.C., Brighton

A. The only way to lighten dark finishes is to remove all finish and stain, and apply a light stain or no stain at all, then two coats of a semigloss polyurethane varnish.

Or, paint them. Apply a latex enamel undercoater and finish with two coats of a semigloss or eggshell-finish paint. If the dark finish bleeds through the undercoater, use BIN, a pigmented shellac, in place of or right on top of the undercoater.

When Bill King of Natick asked why the bulbs in his three-bulb ceiling fixture burned out very quickly, the Handyman conjectured that it might be a loose wire or a faulty fixture.

But Jack Lambert of Weymouth and C.J. Schroeder of Walpole had other ideas.

Said Jack, excessive heat might be causing premature failure, due to bulbs that are too high in wattage for the fixture's design. Lambert suggested putting in lower-watt bulbs.

Schroeder thought that the life of Bill King's bulbs (1 1/2 months) was not too short a life for a standard bulb, and suggested putting in long-life bulbs that claim 2,000 hours of average life.

``Standard bulbs of 60, 75 and 100 watts have a life of 750 hours,'' Schroeder wrote. ``Planned obsolescence!''

Two good points, and the Handyman, as usual, thanks Jack Lambert (a near-and-dear neighbor of the Handyman) and C.J. Schroeder.

Q. How can I remove latex paint that was smeared on some wood trim, without damaging the finish?

J.G., Haverhill

A. Try Goof-Off, sold in hardware stores for that purpose. (I take no reponsibility for silly names.) Another way you can do it is to apply a bit of oil -- any kind will do -- let it sit for 15 minutes, then wipe off or scrape off with a wood scraper. The oil softens the paint enough so it might even be rubbed off with a rough cloth.

Paint remover
Most home improvement projects are really kind of fun.

But here's one project that is no fun at all, and by the time you are ready to make it look good, you're so tired that you would just as soon quit. And sometimes do.

Such a project is removing paint. The more coats of paint on the old wood that you want to restore, the tougher it is to get it off. Or, the wood has all kinds of nooks and crannies that nothing will get the paint from, except maybe tedious sanding. Even tougher is getting paint off brick.

William F. Allan has been living in his Victorian in Jamaica Plain for 17 years, and found that after 17 years, it's time to do everything all over again.

His current project is removing paint -- many layers -- from wainscoting and a chair rail in his kitchen. And remember: The wainscoting is matchstick, with dozens of vertical grooves, making the project even more miserable.

But let's let Allan tell his story:

``I expected a miracle. What I found was a good paint stripper.

``The stories I had heard described a paint stripper, which you applied to the surface and covered with a special paper. Wait. Then remove the paper covering and the paint would have adhered to the paper. Wash off the residue and refinish.

``Following a bit of research, I brought home a gallon of Peel Away. I read the directions, looked at the pictures of the guys in full body overalls, goggles, and masks, and decided that I'd look further for Peel Away 6, and found it.

``I tested behind the refrigerator on wainscoting and the chair rail. The kitchen is over 100 years old, and who knows how many coats of paint were on the surface? Very little definition of the wainscoting panels remained. The results (with the remover) were spotty. Some places the bare wood showed, but overall it seems that the application took off the top layers and left a healthy amount adhered to the surface.

``A call to the manufacturer resulted in a sample of Peel Away 7, described as a stronger, more effective product.

``For the most part, it is much better than Peel Away 6. I bought a case of Peel Away 7 (much less expensive that way) and committed myself to the entire project by applying it to the wainscoting that wasn't hidden by the refrigerator.

``I used it as a second coat over the area previously stripped, and the result was clean wood with some residue in the cracks and where the surface had been bruised.

``Applied as a first coat, Peel Away 7 resulted in a mostly clean surface. The ratio of blotches of paint to clean wood was almost the reverse of Peel Away 6.

``The wood surface seems to make a real difference in how well the product penetrates and binds.

``All in all, Peel Away 7 is a great product. I plan on using a fast-acting stripper like 5F5 for the finish work when warm weather comes and I can open the windows.

``The odor with Peel Away products is pleasant and non-irritating. Changing from a cheap wallpaper brush to a good bristled brush helped get a more even application. It is tough to apply a thick, even coat because it tends to brush out like a thick latex paint.

``More than 4 sheets of the special paper (about 40 square feet) should come with a gallon, but extra sheets are available at Home Depot.

``The product is mild on hands (because even though I used gloves, I'm messy enough to get spots of it here and there). A simple strip of masking tape was enough to protect wall surfaces, and a glob of Peel Away 7 didn't soak through two sheets of newspaper in an hour.''

There you have it. We hope that when William Allan finished the stripping, he had the energy left to finish up the project.

Q. I bought a house built in the 1930s, and one of my first chores is to strip five coats of paint off the fireplace brick. Is there a fast, easy way to do it?

SCOTT STODDARD, Spokane, Wash.

A. Well, yes there is. Pay some long-suffering painter to do it. OK, enough frivolity. No, there is no fast, easy way to do it. It is hard, frustrating work, and when you are halfway done you will say, ``Why did I ever start it?'' But hope springs eternal, because many of us have done this, including the handyman, and here's how: Use Peel Away, or a methylene chloride stripper such as Stripeeze or 5F5. Use lots and lots of ventilation when working with the compound, because it is toxic. Apply a coat, let it sit for 15 mintues, and start scraping with a wide, stiff putty knife. If only the top layer of paint softens, then don't scrape; apply another coat of stripper. It works through itself and will get to lower layers of paint. Repeat this procedure until you get pretty well down to the brick. Apply another coat of stripper and scrub with very coarse steel wool. Wear rubber gloves and protect other areas of skin and your eyes. Finally, you may have to switch to a liquid stripper rather than the gel stripper; the liquid may get into the pores and other nooks and crannies of the brick better than the gel.

There are citrus-based strippers such as Citristrip, which are safer to use than the methylene chloride types, but they are likely to work slower.

Q. I am stripping my front door, which is exposed to the weather. I used Citristrip, and sanded to the bare wood, but it is discolored. I would like to stain it, but is there a way to reduce those discolorations?

MARK PELOSKI, Arlington

A. Treat the bare wood, the entire door, with liquid chlorine bleach, straight from the jug. After it dries, do it again. Rinse thoroughly and let dry. This will reduce the discolorations as much as anything will. Wear skin and eye protection when working with bleach.

Then apply a stain and two to three coats of an exterior, oil-based, high-gloss polyurethane varnish. Or use spar varnish or marine varnish. Because the door is exposed to the weather, don't expect long service from the varnish; three to five years is a guesstimate.

Or instead of the stain and varnish, apply an oil-based semitransparent house stain. Choose your color and apply one coat; two if the first coat is sucked well into the wood. This will last up to five years.