Green oily paint on walls

soupdragon10

I have just stripped the wallpaper from my hallway and landing and up to about 4ft on the lower part of the walls is a layer of dark green oily paint. As my house is 160+ years old I have no idea when this was applied and I assume was some kind of decorative finish at one time.
Have a few questions if anyone might help
1. Is this likely to be lead based? and if so should I just leave it and paint over?
2. If I do paint over it, what is the best paint for the job to seal it before giving final coats.
3. If I need to remove it, what is the best way to do this? I would prefer not to use chemicals as it is quite a large area and impossible to keep my cats / dogs away during any treatment.

cootuk

I would see if a steam stripper would turn it into a mush that can be scraped off.

stebiz

Unfortunately nobody would know for sure unless it was analysed in a lab. Somebody would come along and scrape a bit off and have a look under a microscope.

Could it have asbestos? Possibly. Could it have lead? Most probably.

Probably easier and cheaper to get your walls skimmed with new plaster. Then you can either wallpaper or paint the walls without any worry.

If you aren't worried. Then wear a heavy duty face mask and suit. Cover any furniture, carpets etc and use a scraper and elbow grease creating as little dust as possible.

Then use a h vac to clean it up.

frisbeej

You can get lead paint test swabs.


If it's not flaking and the walls are in good condition you could just paint over it. Just don't sand it!

soupdragon10

Thanks all, didn't fancy sanding it as it's almost certainly lead based. Decided to paint over it, and have applied a basic white emulsion as a first coat which seems to have gone on OK.