Yes Tinker.... You're one of the waaaayyyy too many victims of the "Realtor-induced" Paint-the-trim-and-sell-it phenomenon. I REALLLY WISH most sellers would leave well enough alone. Slapping-up a quick coat of paint usually causes MORE headaches for the new buyers. Sure....it looks good for a bit right before a sale, but then the reality of NO PREP sinks in! Latex paint IS RUBBERY for quite some time! That's the major advantage....flexibility. If it was as hard as Oils, it wouldn't breathe. The Truth/Remedy can be a b*tch....peel-off/sand-off/strip-off the existing paint. The existing paint not peeling now soon will be. And yes, obviously, choose Top-notch 100%-Acrylic paint in a Satin or higher sheen. Once the old oil paint is thoroughly scuff-sanded with 100-grit paper & all dust removed...you're at last ready for 2 coats of your new paint. Priming...wellllll....never hurts, but if you sand well, AND get real good paint, you're good-to-go! Faron

For a surface with multiple layers of paint, the very last layer (the one of top of them all) is only as strong as all the layers underneath it. If one layer has adhesion issues, then all paints applied on top of that will also have adhesion issues. In fact, when you put a layer of paint on top of other layers of paint that are not adhered, your new paint can actually help the previous layers to peel. The weight of the paint itself and the moisture content of the paint puts stress on all the layers underneath. So, there is no dissolving going on and there is no magic primer that will help get old layers of paint that are not adhering to adhere. The only real fix is to remove the failing paint to a sound surface. There are products like PeelBond, but these types of products are only meant to help lock down the edge where the paint has actually peeled. These products do nothing to help paint stick underneath other layers of paint. So, to answer your question, yes. If you paint over latex paint that is not stuck to old oil based paint, your paint and the old latex paint layer will both peel. The good news is that when you have a situation where somebody painted over oil based paint with latex and didn't do any prep, usually the peeling paint is not everywhere. You will most likely find areas where the paint has adhered and areas where it has not and of course, paint will always be most likely to peel in a kitchen because so many people paint over grease and other contaminants in that area...same deal with bathrooms. All you need to do is remove the paint that is peeling. It is not usually necessary to remove all the latex paint.

"Oil over Latex or latex over oil": my 2 cents; First, the controversy largely applies to EXTERIOR paints. Why? Latex paints expand greatly when heat is applied to them ( think rapid surface temperature gain when hit by the sun). Oil paints are brittle from the outset and get more so with age. They are bonded to one another and the latex paint wants to expand, the oil does not - bad scenario. It can literally pull the paint right off a house, especially older homes with many coats of underlying oil paint. Second, pertaining to interior paint: The early generations of "latex" paint (1950's,60's) were exactly that. Many had natural latex resins in them and had adhesion problems when going over the old standby oil paints. The "latex" name has become generic for water based paints. After the initial real latex paints, along came many resin blends such as with acetates. These too came up short on adhesion. Most of today's premium "latex" paints are actually 100%acrylic based. Acrylics have excellent adhesion to oil paints. May I point out that most of today's white carpenter glues are acrylics, obviously because of its adhesive properties. I purposely keep samples of door casings to show customers, which have been base coated with high gloss oil paint. Over this I have applied 100% acrylic paint directly to the oil paint without any preparation, as I wanted to see the worst case scenario. The customer is invited to try to scrape off the acrylic paint. So far, not one has been able to do so! I also have a sample which has been finished coated with our new water based alkyd based paint. It too survives frequent scrapping attempts. As with any new layer of paint, surface prep is critical, especially in kitchens where airborne cooking oils and oily human hands constantly come in contact with the surface of the cabinets. Clean the cabinets and either use a deglosser or give a good scuff sanding to assure good bonding of the new paint, whether oil or "latex".

House is 25 yrs old, guessing existing paint is 15yrs old. For short periods of the year, the shower is used daily, with fan, but as part of this renovation, we discovered that the exhaust fan did not vent to the outdoors, only to the attic. So probably more moisture than there would be ideally. (So we also are installing new properly vented fans.) Didn't clean walls with any product, wiped down. I spoke to Valspar this morning. They suggested I should have cleaned and lightly sanded walls, spot primed the mud. Regarding my concern over peeling, the rep said the paint can take up to 30 days to cure and that he would expect it to harden and adhere more during that time. Then to spot sand lightly where needed to repaint peels. I see now that I can't just go by what the paint label says, but the problem still remains - What's going to happen with this paint that is now on the walls? I have more painting to do, so I'll wash and sand the remaining walls. I can't put my whole project on hold for 4 weeks to see if this paint will stop wanting to peel, but I really don't want to have to strip it all.