This old house - stripping woodwork

I've probably mentioned this before but stripping painted woodwork may be one of my least favorite jobs.  I do not have the patience for jobs that require doing what seems to be the same thing over and over.  However, given that we just had an unexpected week off due to snow, I decided, once I got really bored, to try to get some more woodwork done.

Back story.  This house was a rental for about thirty years before I bought it.  The standard "in-between-rentals" process was followed, including spray painting everything white.  All the beautiful woodwork was coated in many coats of paint.  I started working on the front hall when we first moved in (yes it was twenty years ago, no you don't get to judge me).  Trial and error as to what works best.  I tried watching old house restoration shows but they would always say things like "and we're going to strip the paint off all this beautiful old woodwork" and then in the next scene show the fully restored old woodwork.  Not helpful!

What I have discovered is that applying a chemical stripper of some kind (I  have settled on Soy Gel), I usually let it sit about half an hour and then apply a second coat.  After another half hour or so I  scrape the loose paint and stripper off then scrub everything with a damp stripper pad.  Wiping it all down with paper towels (damp then dry) gets a lot of the dissolved paint off the wood, but there is usually still paint residue in the grain of the wood.  I have to do it one more time, starting completely over with stripper, scraper (for the heavier bits), and stripper pad for the general residue. The stripper/scraping/stripper pads sort of work together and it takes three or four go arounds to finally get pretty close to most of the paint off.

Take a look at the following picture.  On the right you can see four pretty clean posts  Moving leftwards the dark post with a bit of paint is on it's third stage and should be done; the next has been worked over once and now has a second coat of stripper; and the next post is untouched but has a coat of stripper applied.

The Soy Gel is my default primarily because it seems to work at least as well as any of the others that I've tried and it doesn't seem quite as toxic.  It does, however, melt plastic scrapers if you don't wash them off in between uses.  As I discovered.

This really is a tedious, elbow grease type of job.  I am hoping to ramp up a little since I've restarted as I haven't been consistent.  Did a lot for a while, then didn't do anything for years, then did a little, and now it is now.  Years ago my uncle suggested that if I wanted a brown front hall that I paint it brown.  Not sure why he thought that the words brown and wood were synonymous, but I absolutely would have hated it.  It sure would have been easier, but eventually I will have a nice front hall.