Whitewash under emuslion lifting

Paint the area with stabilising solution, leave to dry overnight then emulsion as normal.

Don't think there's any other way:

Scrape down to the whitewash. Seal with whitewash sealer. Paint.

mark

I've not tried this, but I vaguely STR reading that using a wallpaper steam stripper can work.

I did wonder about that

Thanks all for respomses so far- keep them coming. I'm going to see how much scrapes off before I get sick of it.

Scraping will not get all the whitewash off, neither will a steam stripper. The only way is to treat the area with stabilising solution.

Yeah- thanks. Problem is the paint on top of the whitewash is lifting as there's poor adhesion, so I'll scrape the paint, then seal/stabilish the whitewash.

if applying water causes it to lift, apply water and it should peel off. Then apply the minimum of very dilute pva, then paint. Beware of the pva slicking, if it does then painting it will be a horror.

NT

Regretfully, water doesn't lift it, but new paint has it peeling straight off :-(

if its like my house then its lime paint / lime wash which is porous unlike modern paint and used to be reapplied every year or two or wetted down...

I'm going to remove the emulsion using something like peelaway 7 or peelaway1

The easy option is to just keep rolling the new paint back and forth until it binds up the old. At some point the whole lot should stabilise, and IME the final finish is surprisingly uniform. If you're using one of those gel consistency emulsions (the last Dulux I used was of that type), try thinning it a little, or switching to a bog standard own brand

My house is a basic ex-miner's house, so doesn't have any beautiful mouldings, sadly.

I did consider that, but it comes of in sheets, wraps around the roller, breaks up, and sticks back to the ceiling.

I've had this to a lesser degree in another room, and I think what I did was apint the whole lot with that crack-covering stuff.

Thanks everyone for suggestions, I'll post back with whatever I do.

Have you tried a "heavy duty scraper"? Just a 4" blade on a handle but, if the ceiling is reasonably flat, it might be a fine enough edge to get under the coating

I've just got the paint off with a scraper- one of those with a sharp blade at the end, like a stanly blade but 3-4" wide, so I guess that's what you meant. Created a hell of a mess, but it's off. Now need to get some stabiliser on it.

Yes, that's the thing