Distemper paint? Skimming question

[Valderrama]

Hello,

We have a 1930s house whose walls were covered in terrible wallpaper! We have now stripped most of it and want to get the walls skimmed for a great finish.

However, in the box room and in the hallways, there appears to be distemper paint above where the picture rails would have been (the previous owners took the rails out).

In our old house we had the same but it was far more flakey and came off easily with some hot water and a bit of elbow grease.

In this house seems much less chalky and working around for 5-10 minutes I was only able to get a tiny spot back to the plaster(see photo!). It will be near impossible to wipe this back to the plaster.

Help! Is there another way to deal with this?

 

[Infoelec]

I would try to remove it using paint stripper, if not, you could replace the area with a base such as bonding plaster and then skim over as usual.

Tip: You could scratch a 'key' into the paintwork / plaster deeply and then plaster over it. Make a hash pattern with a sharp tool.

 

[NickB_99]

Help! Is there another way to deal with this?

Does this cover with WBA (or similar) and then skim over adequately?

I've not been over any paint with distemper before, so I'm not sure if it reacts chemically.
Given the stuff is on pretty tight, the physical key onto the paint from the WBA should be fine.
OP would probably be interested (as I) if this approach would likely fail.

 

[stevethespreader]

go with newbie, only sugar soap the wall first then wba