You can put drywall over the plaster, then you have to worry about trim, and outlets. Here is the guide from the EPA, on lead paint safety. https://www.epa.gov/lead/renovation-repair-and-painting-program-do-it-yourselfers

We had hoped not to put drywall over the plaster. We will have to do that at some point with the back of the house that is all paneling. I've thought of it bit it would be difficult with the old trim and the is a lot of it. Not sure I could convince DH.

We need a way to smooth out plaster (from patching) without creating too much dust. Is that possible? I've wondered about primering over it then texturing over that.

use a hepa vacuum cleaner with a sander keeping the surface wet. Panelling of course is another option, comes in plain white sheets.

Or wet sand with a sponge and go with the texture.

I'm fine with texture. DH wants it smoorh because it's more authentic to the type of wall but I'm not letting "authentic" win out over my kid's safety. Wet sanding would keep the dust down.

You could hire a company to test the walls in your house with an XRF analyzer. With a child living in the house, I personally would feel uncomfortable disturbing lead paint (even by wet sanding) if not absolutely necessary.

How much damage and what type - cracks or what? Generally its only the new plaster that would be sanded flat not the walls. Assuming there is not a lot of old paint flaking off, or really extensive repairs to be done which necessitate removing loose pieces.... you could use encapsulant primer first over the old plaster surfaces, THEN repair? Have you looked into professional abatement?

Drywall over plaster is a hideous mistake - extremely difficult to undo later on. Glad you dont want to do that!

mononhemeter - I will look into that. It would be good to know exactly what we have. We knew there would be lead paint in this house, its just too old not to have any but we ran into it where we weren't expecting too. We were going to refinish the old floors and then discovered that the finish had lead, so we laid new floor instead.

Current resident - Whoever originally hung the wallpaper repaired the walls before they did so, so most of the patching is to fix where removing the wallpaper tore out some of the plaster patches (there was a LOT of patching done and its thick in some places, like under the windows) and where there were holes from screws (something heavy must have been hung up). The actual paint itself isn't peeling and isn't very thick. I know it's mostly the plaster that will be sanded but to make it smooth you'd have to sand a bit of the wall.

I was looking into skim coating by covering the whole wall with thinned joint compound and a roller and then using a squeegie type trowel to smooth it. On one hand that sounds good because you'd be covering the whole wall and mostly smoothing with the trowel and any light sanding then would just be modern joint compound, but I do wonder about that failing? You would still have to remove any old plaster patches that were ready to chip away so it wouldn't fail under it too. The wall itself isn't losing pieces, its some of the unpainted patches that are failing and would need removed. Mostly confined to a couple of spots where they put it on super thick. As bad as it looks, most of it actually seems fairly smooth but its hard to imagine it under a painted surface.

I would hire a drywaller to come in and skim coat the entire room, and get it done right, so you never have to worry about it again. Looks like you have some very nice trim, once it is cleaned up. I hope you decide to keep it the nice stained color.

cat_ky, we definitely don't intend to paint the trim it's part of what we loved about the house. I might look into having someone do it, though DH will fight me on it.

I'm off to buy a good quality HEPA certified vacuum for this type of thing. I realize that we really need one with this house. DH's shop-vac has a HEPA filter but I doubt it's a sealed system.

Thanks David. Right now I think the plan is to get out any of the failing plaster patches. We'll do that as wet as possible to keep dust down. Then I was thinking of using Zinniser Gardz to seal the wall, then we'll repair any bad spots and do a few skim coats with a paint roller and using a squeegie type trowel to smooth. After a few coats of that any sanding required should be 100% joint compound.

the thread is talking lead, not asbestos

Salti read the whole thread. Encapsulation is a form of abatement. Abatement does not necessarily mean removal.

To listen to "the sky is falling" crowd, one tiny wiff of lead or asbestos and one is going to immediate and long term consequences. Even Federal regs allow a contarctor to disturb 6 sq feet of area without taking extreme control measures. There is nothing wrong with keeping the those areas encapsulated. I dare say, there is less chance of having free asbestos or lead floating around if they are left alone and encapsulated, rather than taking the extreme measure or trying to remove it. Even States like Massachusetts, which have had extreme measures, have backed off of them. The cost of complete removal becomes astronomical, to the point of not being economically feasible. The Catch 22 is also that the cost of tearing a building down that is known to have lead or asbestos becomes very expensive, to the point that it will stand there vacant until someone is wiling to suffer the cost.

Curiously, I am old enough to have put on lead paint as a contractor (pre-1973) and have sanded a lot of lead and asbestos materials off in later years. I am still going strong at 75, but yes, I have been tested against both contaminants.

The mechanisms of exposure to lead and asbestos are rather different, so let's focus on the issue the OP is worried about, which is lead. I also do not like to see such concerns trivialized, particularly as lead is a toxic substance that has more serious impacts on the developing brain of a juvenile than on an adult, and can result in permanent, irreversible damage. I'm not trying to cause paranoia; I just think the OP is wise to proceed cautiously.

I would get a professional drywaller to skim coat -- not just patch -- the walls as someone with experience can do a job that will require much less sanding; and I would insist that any sanding be wet sanding. I would want to keep the room sealed off with visqueen at the door and visqueen on the floor, have any air vents temporarily sealed off while this work is going on, and minimize tracking of dust through the rest of the house. Wearing respirators if you do any of the work would be prudent. When it's finished, do a thorough wet wiping/mopping of all surfaces...maybe twice.

I give this advice reluctantly because I suspect you probably aren't up for the cost of professional lead abatement at the moment, and you clearly have to do something about this. However, you are going to have to make a judgment call, and if you are concerned that very much dust is being generated you will have to consider, once you get into this job, if it's safer to have it done professionally, or at least have a certified firm come in to do a thorough HEPA vacuuming job at the end. You should also talk with your local, State, or Federal air quality agency (EPA) to get their advice.

Just be comfortable with whatever you choose to do, as you don't want to embark on this and later have concerns that you weren't careful enough when you can no longer undo your actions.

I have 2 small kids and we have been in a recurring stage of renovating our 90-year old house from the time I was pregnant, nursing and beyond. In addition to taking practical DIY precautions like Kudzu mentioned, I would suggest that you and your kids work with a *trusted, independent* healthcare provider to get a baseline lead screening and then periodic monitoring.

Thanks Kats, I did have the kids tested last week and their tests came back good, so I know there wasn't and initial exposure, nor a general exposure from living in the house, so that is a good start. We will be following up with that in a few months.

forevernow-

I didn't want to cause unnecessary concern, so I didn't suggest testing, but I think that the initial testing was a good idea, and the followup should provide reassurance since you are being careful. I think that other surfaces, like any painted trim that would have to be stripped, would be a potentially more significant source of lead release than the walls, but the walls could be a problem, too, if significant sanding occurred. By having a float coat put on over what's already there, it should provide a buffer, so that any touch-up sanding won't get down to what lead may already be on the wall. Once the wall is smooth and sealed with a couple of coats of paint, everything should be safe in your son's room. Good luck with your project...it sounds like you are on top of this.

It is possible to skiim coat a thin coat of real plaster over drywall and avoid most of the sanding. Usually, a bonding agent is applied first, as normally plaster doesn't like thin coats over old finishes.

While I have not personally worked hands-on with lead removal, I have worked on plaster and painting projects where lead was present. What I have generally learned is that lead is heavy enough that unlike asbestos you do not typically have to worry about it being airborn after work is done. Any bits that might possibly flake off during troweling or sanding will quickly fall to the floor where it can be contained by your plastic floor covering.

But the big key as mentioned above is that the process for leveling your wall, assuming what paint is left is stable, will be additive with drywall compound or plaster leveler rather than trying to scrape back to an original plaster surface. As such you will be mostly sanding the new material rather than the old paint (and paint doesn't sand that well as it is). Proper personal protection during work, containing the room, plastic on the floor wrapped up and tapped to the walls, and a HEPA vacuum are going to be your best tools.

If you are really concerned, you could prime the walls to encapsulate the old paint first, then do the leveling and sanding (but again this assumes that the paint is stable and not peeling). Talk to a paint professional or local rep on a suitable primer to use that won't de-bond the existing paint (go the your paint manufacturer's website to look for the local contacts, good expertise is not necessarily found at the counter of your neighborhood paint store).

But if your walls are really uneven, I don't think you will get away without sanding. The worst of it can still project through wallpaper unless it's especially thick.

A Fox-

You have some helpful suggestions mixed in with some misinformation which needs to be corrected.

When surfaces containing lead are sanded, lead particles can get airborne, so it is not correct to simply say they are so heavy that the bits fall to the ground and you don't have to worry that lead will get airborne. It's true that large bits of flaking paint do fall to the ground when scraping and sanding occur, but that doesn't mean than dust is not produced, and that can not only get airborne (hence the need for respirators) but fall to the ground and get tracked around on shoes if precautions aren't taken. Further, this does not appear to be a situation where there is flaking paint: it seems to be a case of well-bonded paint where it is prudent to avoid sanding the original surface. Children most typically get lead poisoning through ingestion, often because their hands are frequently in their mouths, so this is another reason to avoid contaminating a house or a room with microscopic lead dust.

The point is, lead is not Plutonium. You are not going to drop over dead with one wiff of the dust!

Of course, reasonable personal protection should be used, mostly lead rated respirators. It is a good idea to launder your work cloths alone daily, isolated from general laundry. This is especially true when working with asbestos.

Daily clean up of the work area with vacumes with HEPA filters is recommended. If possible, I would probably damp mop the floor too.

Thanks for the additional input everyone! Right now we have put Zinssier Gardz over the old paint (there is no peeling, it is quite thin paint actually). The Gardz is made to create a good surface for the new plaster to adhere too. I've been in and Hepa vacuumed and cleaned all the surfaces with a lead specific cleaner and removed all the plastic we had in there. We'll be covering with a new coat of plastic and tape soon and start the skim coating. The goal is to do 2-3 very thin coats using a thinned joint compound and a magic trowel. Trying to get it as smooth as possible to keep sanding to a minimum. It will just have to be a very careful and selective sanding to get ridges. The wall isn't going to be totally flat no matter what we do anyway, it's old plaster after all.

I have been wondering if the kind of primer we use over the skim coat matters? Would an oil based primer be better for any reason? Another coat of the Gardz to help harden then a white primer?

This definitely hasn't been fun and we'll have some hard choices going forward with the rest of the house which is all covered in wallpaper. It might just be new wallpaper for us for now. Possibly paint over it. I did that in my daughters room because her room is wallpaper over paneling so it was a temporary fix until we can drywall but it worked well. However the older parts of the house downstairs have many, many layers of wallpaper so I'm less inclined to think painting over them would work well.

All of our woodwork is stained (thought the stain could very well have lead too, we haven't tested because we haven't messed with them) and luckily the windows themselves were replaced with vinyl windows so we're not dealing with painted window seals.

Start loading up on whole full fat milk. It will help to block lead ingestion into the body.

And wet sand the problem areas. There won't be any dust.

Thanks sambah, good to know! We already use whole milk, my kids have it every morning. Glad to know it might have other benefits.

sambah006 and forevernow-

As someone who worked at EPA and was involved in its lead programs for a number of years, let me be very clear that milk consumption does not prevent lead poisoning in children, nor would it be considered an effective treatment method for treating elevated blood lead levels. It is true that children who eat comprehensively healthy diets have a somewhat lower incidence of lead problems, but this is for many reasons, and good diet, including milk consumption, does not in itself magically "vaccinate" children against lead or having lead-related problems. Lead is difficult to remove from the body once it is ingested, is more harmful to growing bodies than adults, and can cause permanent, irreversible deficits, such as hearing loss and reduction of IQ.

I'm not trying to be an alarmist about lead exposure. I'm just hoping to provide some balance to what I see as well-meaning, but incomplete and falsely reassuring advice. The best way to protect children against lead problems is to minimize exposure via many possible pathways in the first place. By all means ensure that children have healthy diets, and that they freely consume milk. But don't be lulled into thinking that a couple of daily glasses of milk makes your kids bulletproof, and especially if there is the possibility of increased lead exposure.

What I would do is put a heavy coat of lead encapsulation paint over it, then prime heavily with oil primer, THEN patch, then sand a bit. When you sand if you see the color of your encapsulation paint showing through the primer you know you need to stop. However, I'm good enough with a mudding trowel that the sanding needed would be very, very minimal. If this is your first time mudding or skim coating you will likely have to be more aggressive with the sanding.

Honestly it may be time to just have a professional skim coat it for you and call it a day. Lead paint is not quite as dangerous as people think but it is also nothing to toy with, especially with kids in the house.