When I started my house painting and repair business 26 years ago, I used to purchase solvent based hand cleaners to remove oil based paint from my hands. Many hand cleaners use mineral spirits or other chemical based agents as part of their formula. These chemicals are very hard on skin. After a few years, my hands started looking very rough and became hyper sensitive to solvent base cleaners.
Solvent based hand cleaners did a pretty good job of removing oil based paint, but at the expense of poor quality skin. After developing problems with my skin, I switched to using citrus based hand cleaners and found that citrus based hand cleaners were an improvement. They actually cleaned my skin about as well as the solvent based cleaners. Citrus based hand cleaners were less caustic to my hands.
However, after a few years of using citrus cleaners, I became allergic to something in the cleaner. Perhaps it was the citrus extracts themselves. I don't know for sure.
What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. oil and water were the same as wind and air to you.
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
One day when painting around my home using oil base paint, I decided to try using baby oil to clean the paint off my hands. Why not try baby oil and see if it will remove oil base paint. Therefore, I applied baby oil to my hands and started rubbing the oil into my dry skin and found that the oil base paint was dissolving. I applied the baby oil 3 or 4 times to my hands and rubbed it into my skin before rinsing with water. Then I dried my hands very well and applied it one more time to remove any residual paint. When I was done, my skin felt soft and conditioned.
I have to tell you, using baby oil was a vast improvement over anything I had ever used before, and it's all I've used for years.
Sometimes the simplest things sitting right under your nose turn out to be the best solution to your problem.
Most people hew the battlements of life from compromise, erecting their impregnable keeps from judicious submissions, fabricating their philosophical drawbacks from emotional retractions and scalding marauders in the boiling oil of sour grapes.
—Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948)
Remember these key points before using baby oil. Do not wet your hands before using baby oil. If you wet your hands first, the water will repel the baby oil rendering it useless. Be sure and apply the baby oil 2 to 3 times to your hands wiping with a dry paper towel between applications. When the paint is desolved, rinse with soap and warm water. Work the baby oil into your skin and within two shakes of a cat's tail, you will notice the oil based paint will start dissolving. Wash and then dry your hands well. If you see any residual oil paint then reapply the baby oil.
Baby oil doesn't clean quite as fast as your solvent based hand cleaners, but who cares when you can avoid having your skin look like tree bark.
Nicky Taylor CEO Of http://www.home-painting-services.com/index.html Visit our site and see what all the noise is about. Click here for our interior painting and exterior house painting section. Our painting tips section offers more information on valuable topics pertaining to home improvement.