Covering up a mural that may be painted over lead paint

gloves/masks/goggles - use 'em - especially the masks and goggles if you are not planning to open the windows while painting

where will sozlet be staying while this project goes on?

do your best with the ventilation of the room - I suspect E.G. will have more of a problem with the fumes in the house than sozlet

Thanks Joe! More good stuff.

Sozlet will be sleeping in another room until all is dry. Hopefully that won't be long. (I expect it depends on the paint I use. The primer evidently is super-quick.)

So you think I should use gloves and goggles while painting, AND while smoothing out the mural best as I can?

You are working in a room where you don't know for sure if there is a lead-based paint. You won't be ventilating properly.

Mask/goggles/gloves.

Try to have everyone sleep on a different floor until at least a couple of nights after you think things are dry.

Painting rooms that aren't properly ventilated make me extremely nervous re fumes.

It's not a matter of ventilating IF there's lead based paints. It's a matter of spreading that lead far and wide in the room and in the house. Your daughter needs a freshly painted room a whole lot less than lead contamination. I'd get it tested.

Those were two separate points I was making.

I really was addressing Soz, though your name was on the post, ehBeth. I wasn't criticizing you or your points. I was addressing the seriousness of lead contamination and the chance that it would be spread far and wide, resulting in huge costs for containment and cleanup.

Re: needing a freshly-painted room a whole lot less than lead contamination: Obviously, that's why I'm asking.

IF there is lead based paint under a layer or four of non-lead-based paint -- and I hope I've made it clear that there are layers of paint since the 80's, I'm just not sure how many -- then what is your advice, exactly? Just leave the gross dirty white and ugly murals in perpetuity? Do the 1/4-inch drywall thing?

My current thinking: 1) Carefully smooth out the (acrylic?) mural, which is on a non-lead-based paint surface. (Cream, applied about 12 years ago.). Use gloves and mask.

2) Discard gloves and mask when completed.

3) Apply Joe's recommended sealer. Let dry.

4) Paint.

What about that, if anything, sounds bad to you?

I don't have a lot of advice to offer in this regard, Soz as I've never run into this situation, ie. lead based paint. I've done lots of renos, but I stayed away from the real old houses.

The overall plan sounds pretty good BUT, I'm sure that there is a wealth of information to be had from the EPA or some such organization. All I'm saying is that it's better to err way on the side of caution given the potential for a not so great result.

Call from a pay phone and run the plan by some experts, [not saying that Joe doesn't have some dealings with this].

Good luck with whatever you proceed with.

While you're waiting for the primer to dry, use damp cloths to pick up, wipe up, sweep up any dust. (Wet dust is icky, but it's better than dry dust.)
Pick up all the newspapers you had spread on the floor while you were removing the murals.....You did put paper down, right? And replace them with new ones for the painting ..... .

Are the floors carpeted? If so, then the final job of this project will be to shampoo the rugs.

I've always found that work goes top down: Start with Ceilings, then windows, then Walls and finally, floors.

When my kids were little, their job was to put the plates back over the light switches and receptacles. Good hand/eye co-ordination exercise and it made them feel like they finished the job.
Joe(I had forgotten about that until, thirty years later, one of them
mentioned how much he liked doing it.)Nation

That's cool! (The plate thing.)

What I actually would like to do is replace the carpet at the end of the whole thing. That is, be careful during the whole process, but at the end (carefully) rip up the carpet and put in a new one. (The carpet was originally cream or light tan but three babies + toddlers later is pretty grungy, even with cleaning.)

If the wood floor beneath is gorgeous (which could happen) I'll push for leaving it and just putting down an area rug, but sozlet likes carpet.

yup

potential for lead paint

err waaaaaaaay on the side of caution

I get erring on the side of caution, how far though?

I've already looked at much of the info available online, I couldn't find anything that applied to this exactly (I knew not to sand, but not what to do about the bumpy mural).

So, gloves, mask, goggles, etc., I get that. Then what? Anything else?

how far?

http://www.epa.gov/lead/pubs/renovaterightbrochure.pdf

http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/pubs/5054.html

http://www.bobvila.com/HowTo_Library/Encapsulating_Lead_Based_Paint-Miscellaneous_Paint_and_Wallpaper-A1620.html

I saw all the important information there, if not those exact documents.

The big question is -- am I disturbing a painted surface in any meaningful way? I'm smoothing down the acrylic (?) mural. There are ways to do this without disturbing the underlying paint at all. And "disturbing" in most of this stuff seems to be a bigger deal than what we're talking about here. They have pictures of holes in walls, and they're talking about tearing down walls and renovations. Not basically washing a wall.

When I do find something that is close to my situation -- though again, I haven't found anything that covers it exactly -- it seems pretty non-alarmist. For example, from your second link, it says:



It doesn't say "use goggles, mask, and gloves while doing this." It doesn't say "this is an extremely risky procedure and should only be done by a trained professional" -- and that's when they're purposely going down the the bottom layer where the lead is most likely do be, and really disturbing it. It just says wipe the surface with a wet cloth or paper towel and discard the cloth or towel. That doesn't seem like they think it's a huge deal, and what I'd be doing is less disruptive than that.

That one also speaks well of "wet methods."

I'm getting a little frustrated because apart from Joe (thanks again) I'm getting lots of concern but not recommendations. What do you guys think I should do? Leave the whole shebang as-is? (The links I just read reaffirm that doing something about it is actually a better idea, rather than letting it decay and flake.) Get a contractor to deal with this? Do the 1/4 inch sheetrock? Forget about the mural and just paint, outlines be damned? Do the spackle thing Edgar suggested to smooth out the mural without disturbing anything? What?

One of my biggest flaws is erring on the side of caution, that's why the room has sat there deteriorating for six years. I want to move on this, and am asking for advice on how to best do so.

Anyway... I just double-checked something, and I've managed to smooth out almost all of the two biggest murals without even getting down to the white. That is, I was dealing with only the uppermost (probably acrylic) layer. There are occasional lumps and bumps but that doesn't bother me much. I just don't want them to cohere into a recognizable image -- random small lumps are fine. There are non-mural bumps here and there anyway.

So I think I can just keep going that route, then mondo sealer, then mondo paint, and everything will be more or less smooth. Smooth enough at any rate.

Separately, all this stuff has renewed general fears of lead contamination (things I've read, including ehBeth's links, talk about it leaching into soil around the house and then being tracked in for example, completely apart from lead in interior walls). Sozlet's lived in old houses her whole life (and me too, in terms of pregnancy), so I'm going to get her tested again. (We tested her when she was littler and she was fine at the time.)