2 things can cause this usually - 1) painting oil over latex without proper priming; 2) not deglossing the old paint (this can be done with a liquid deglosser or by lightly sanding to get rid of the shine). In your case, regardless of what caused it, you should scrape off any loose paint, sand and maybe even prime the entire area with a bonding primer. Then repaint. Your local paint store can recommend a proper primer (not a DIY store).

As long as the current finish is sound---as mentioned in the above post, a thorough cleaning---Spin n Span/etc.---and a swipe with 150 grit on a hand block is fine for using a primer like BIN made by Zinsser. Any shellac based primer will do---I just get the best results when using BIN or Bullseye 123. Then use whatever paint you wish. As for the wrist problem, hand sanding lightly with a sanding block will be less demanding than using almost any power sander.

We would like to put glass lift and slide doors (or some other sliding door with a minimal threshold) into our apartment in NYC in order to allow us to have separate office spaces which are still somewhat sound resistant but still let light through. Someone on another one of these posts recommended lift and slide doors, which I had not heard of, but which sounds like this is exactly what would work for us. I was hoping there might be a few people here with expertise in this area that could offer some advice. Here are our questions: 1) Can we even use lift-and-slide doors in our floor situation? This is a high-rise condo bldg with concrete subfloors (and the bldg won't give us permission to do any drilling into the concrete subfloor). We will be putting in new bamboo floating floors which are 9/16" thick on top of FloorMuffler underlayment - is this enough room for the tracks in the lift and slide doors systems to be laid into the floor so that they are still recessed as they are supposed to be? (I've tried to look at the specs on the various websites, but wasn't clear about how much space you needed in the floor to install the recessed tracks.) 2) Any particular recommendations on brand? These will be all interior, so weatherproofing features are just a waste of money in our case, but we do want something that slides easily and which is a sound resistant as possible, and which is hopefully reliable and durable. We'd also prefer less framing and more glass, to let more light and views through. The brands I've found so far are: Marvin, Panda, Kolbe, Weiland, Nanawall, and Weathershield. Anyone have any particular recommendations about one brand being better than another (in particular for our described usage)? Thanks in advance for any advice!

Mom lives with us, I work full time so when I'm not home she is up and down stairs and it's starting to be an issue. She has been experiencing a lot of pain for the last month or so, we can't figure it out but it is limiting her movement. We've considered moving her downstairs but she actually has more freedom and room upstairs. We've given her 3 of the bedrooms and she has her own bathroom. If we move her downstairs we would essentially have to give up 2 of our rooms and enlarge the powder room into my laundry leaving me with having to do laundry in the basement. Not an option. I'm hoping she will be open to the stairlift.