I have just been reading about lead paint encapsulation. Fred, my favorite painting professional has his lead paint certificate from the state of Massachusetts. He told me about the classes last year. I suppose I should ask him about encapsulation.

We removed all of our interior trim when we moved in. My husband has milled all new old fashioned trim for our house in his workshop. The new trim has been stained.

I wonder if anyone on the restoration forum knows whether mills will make new bent wood trim and how awfully expensive it is.

As someone mentioned here on the paint forum the search engine is not very helpful. When I look up paint info it directs me to gardening information.

Replacing the trim in an old house should be a last resort, IMO, and that's what you will hear on the Old House Forum. I have been scraping and sanding the trim in my 1919 house for a while now and my body lead levels are fine (no children in the house, past child bearing age). So, IMO, renovation is possible.

Personally, I could live with some visible, painted over chips and cracks as part of the charm of an old house.

You might want to look at a product called Trim Magic. It is the trim version of Peel Bond.

Neither the can nor the technical data sheet mention that, Funcolors. It says only "be sure the surface is clean and dry, free from dust, grease, wax, oil, and other surface contaminants."

I used it over an oil based primer. I didn't see much of a result, but may not have applied it heavily enough.

Thank you so much for telling me about Trim Magic. It may do the trick.

When we bought our house the trim that we removed had been painted over the shellac without being primed or properly prepared. The paint was split with the old shellac finish showing through all over the house. The wood was poplar.

We decided that it just was not worth the effort to strip all that poplar. My husband milled new trim in the original style but in white oak.

I did strip all 54 of the turned balusters and the rest of the staircase. It took a heck of a long time to get it all clean enough to be refinished. There were some broken parts where my husband made repairs with new poplar.

We found a great guy who has done finishing work in some important old New England homes. He did a wonderful job of getting all of the sections to match. He had to do it in a walnut color to achieve a nice allover look. He used a Zar gel stain.

The stairway stands as a sort of antique in the middle of the house. He really made it glow.

Part of my concern about sanding or scraping the lead paint is that we have two small terriers. I would not want to expose them to the dust and chips.

I am very grateful to all of you for your advice.

Michele

I tried Peel Bond on the sides of my home and it did well so I wanted to buy some more. I've found a vendor, but mysteriously many of the places locally that the Peel Bond site said carried it, only had a can. One had discontinued it because, he said. of lack of demand. That makes me uneasy. It seems like a good product but if it is, why isn't it getting scooped up?

Just wanted to let you all know what I finally did. I found a product called Timbermate. I used it to fill the cracks and chipped places. Then I primed it with an oil based primer. I used an oil based primer because some people said that when they used a latex primer on this water based product it dissolved it a little. When Timbermate id dry this should not happen but i did not want to take any chances. I did it a year and a half ago and it is holding up well.