how do i get rid of messy cracked painting

hello,

I'm going to paint over old woodwork, on door architraves. The old paint is cracked or flaking off. i've already sanded down the wood but there still appears to be more loose paint and gets bigger the more I sand down. should I do some more sanding down... i dont want to end up doing the whole architrave ... or is this the only way?

Get a sharp chisel and scrape the paint off the edges so you can feather sand a single edge, you could also get some woodfiller which is akin to car body filler to smooth out the paint to wood edge. Using this product makes it more durable to knocks.
Scraping paint off with a chisel

I dont have a chisel, and I'm guessing it would make it a larger area of uneven paint. I'm not sure what feather sand means, should I just take to it with my sander and see how far it goes? may use very fine sand paper.

Hi, feather sanding is just trying to feather the edge of the old paint to a more graduated edge, the issues start to arise when people have either used cheap paint, arcylic; waterbased paints, or just glossed over glossed woodwork with no preparation and no undercoat to created a binding layer, then the paint just starts to flake off. Having years of old paint that has been repeatedly knocked off and cracked can make for an unsightly mess but if you have a family things like that are going to happen and nothing will prevent that other than wrapping everyone including the dog in bubblewrap lol!

By all means get a sander on it but the issue there is that all you are going is sanding paint instead of blending/feathering the edge of the old paint so hand sanding is probably a better option than power sanding, less dust too.

thanks mate, I'm going to scrape off as much of the old paint, then sand then hand sand to feather the edge. Will post the paint results

These are great scrapers for this kind of problem
http://www.toolstation.com/shop/p82...=82217&gclid=Cj0KEQjw9YTJBRD0vKClruOsuOwBEiQA

Rub back with 80g, where the paint has one back to wood, spot prime x 2 coats to lift those areas up a few microns

Then undercoat or use a wb satin that is uc and tc in one.