I have the land abstract on my house and property. It goes back to when it was originally sold to the rail road by the government in 1851. There was 40 acres with my little place here then, and it was inherited by family that bought it from the RR more times than it was sold. But the house is old too, just a little thing, and I'm redoing the kitchen. I could just tear the whole works out and start over, but I have a liking for the original build. So I'm stripping all the old paint off the kitchen cupboards and staining them. I like the wood grain and I've kept some of the originality alive. But there is layer after layer of old paint on them, and at one point they were even OLIVE GREEN, if you can imagine that...
Long filthy process but rewarding I think. Almost used a gallon of paint stripper already. Here's what the first coat of paint lifting looks like... and there's 3 or 4 more layers under that... have to do this at least that many times to get it down to wood where I can run the belt sander on it...
Going to do the floor next, put down some kind of hard laminate that has it's own adhering on it, then new cupboards along the opposite wall, then a new stainless steel stove with stainless steel behind it, and a new stainless steel range hood... and I think I'll be done.