paint removal

[smartlady]

hi

after treating a few damp spots i have to remove the paint off the rest of the wall ,any idea`s what is best to use to do the job?

it is just an inside wall painted with emulsion paint

[verne]

hello again.

as usual more information is needed to answer. it depends what paint you want to remove and from what sort of surface?

apart from special paints there are a few different sorts in common use; the types a householder is likely to be using will be water based plastic emulsion or acrylic types or the synthetics - oil based alkyd enamels or varnishes. you might sometimes use a laquer also. the big question is do you wash your brushes in white spirit or water?

standard caustic type paint stripper will sort out most paints that needs white spirit as a solvent and the water based one is less messy (though not much) and more convenient.

water based paints, once cured, generally are considered fairly inert and resistant to most solvents and paint strippers. i have bought paint stripper that was dedicated to removing water based paints, but that was 20 years ago and i haven't seen it on the shelves since then. it will be a case of asking at a good decorators or builder's merchant...

failing that it will be a case of using whatever mechanical means is at your disposal - scraping, rubbing, wire brushes, sand blasting and so on. i use a drill attachment called the rotary stripper that does a good job for anyone with a light touch.

as your wall is coated with emulsion paint the latter situation will apply. not sure why you should need to remove the paint? generally once a wall is painted it stays painted; little apart from sand blasting will produce a clean wall again. if it is rendered or plastered and a clean wall is desired for some reason then knocking as much off as you can and replaster would be the quickest and most satisfactory method... as i said emulsion paint is fairly inert so makes a good base for most other finishes, as long as it is sound and not flakey, and can be used as an isolator between incompatible paint types.