Noob needs help with peeling paint.

[Jonas]

We live in a rented apartment. A few years ago the landlord offered to do a full renovation to fix up the place which was inconvenient for us as we had to move out and pack stuff for a week or so and there was no time for this.

Instead we opted to have the glossy paint in the living room and kitchen, which reflected sunlight from the main windows, painted over with a matte paint. This only took up half a day.
Now, about six or seven years later, some of that paint is starting to peel. The kitchen ceiling in particular has patches all over and is quite unsightly.

I don't know what the options are for something like this, paint over it again, remove one layer or start from scratch (I don't know what that last bit entails). Could anyone please make a suggestion on the best option for fixing this.

 

[Retired]

Hi,

As your apartment is rented jonas you'll be doing the work and buying materials for your landlord with no gain to you other than visual appeal.

Without pictures to show the extent of the problem the cheapest option is to simply sand down and repaint; is the ceiling painted directly onto the ceiling or is it onto ceiling paper; if its ceiling paper simply steam the paper to remove it and re-paper with a heavy lining paper or an embossed paper; an embossed paper will hide blemishes better but any cracks etc will require filling and making good. Kitchen ceilings are bad news because they suffer from a lot of moisture and I think this will be the cause of your flaking paint; our kitchen ceiling also suffers a bit of flaking paint but mostly during winter when ventilation is poor; our ceiling is painted directly onto the plasterboard with emulsion; rubbing down and repainting over kitchen ceiling emulsion can end up making the job a lot worse because the moisture in the new emulsion attacks the old paint; oil based paint if correctly applied overcomes the moisture problem much better because the moisture cannot penetrate the paint. Oil based paint wouldn't be a good choice over emulsion. It's not an easy question to answer because of the moisture contained in a kitchen. I moved the location of our electric kettle in the kitchen because the steam generated eventually caused black mould on the ceiling in the wall cupboard just above the kettle;; removing the mould and re-siting the kettle cured the problem; the bit of paint flaking now on our kitchen ceiling is directly above the cooker where it's subjected to heat and steam each time the cooker door is opened. Every few years I simply use a scraper to scrape away loose flaking paint and repaint again with more emulsion.

Had it been your own property I'd have suggested a complete strip and start from scratch taking a lot of time and care in prepping; I'm not a painter and decorator by trade but over the last 40 years I've done plenty of such work.

Pictures would help; Bron and I own our bungalow so I can and do go way over the top and recently did lots of decorating as seen here;

https://www.diy-forums.com/threads/wooden-mouldings.289728/

In living rooms and bedrooms decorating is much easier and only limited by funds available and imagination; I'm sure if you browse YouTube jonas you'll find plenty of videos?

Kind regards, Colin.

 

[Dirtmechanic]

We live in a rented apartment. A few years ago the landlord offered to do a full renovation to fix up the place which was inconvenient for us as we had to move out and pack stuff for a week or so and there was no time for this.

Instead we opted to have the glossy paint in the living room and kitchen, which reflected sunlight from the main windows, painted over with a matte paint. This only took up half a day.
Now, about six or seven years later, some of that paint is starting to peel. The kitchen ceiling in particular has patches all over and is quite unsightly.

I don't know what the options are for something like this, paint over it again, remove one layer or start from scratch (I don't know what that last bit entails). Could anyone please make a suggestion on the best option for fixing this.

USA? You should have primed first. Wet sand it...rather damp sand it...and then prime it, then repaint it. A pro job has 2 layers primer and 2 of paint on a raw surface. You can skate with 1 and 2 because existing. If you tint your primer maybe even 1 and 1, and if you can find an acceptable self priming paint like Behr makes then possibly 1 if it is the same color as you initially used.