Walls and Ceilings - Painting an old ceiling that flakes

:confused: Our church building is an old red brick school from 1925. In one of the basement rooms (which was once a fallout shelter) we are attempting to paint the ceiling, which was flaking badly. After much scraping, we painted it with a latex ceiling paint, and, before we could finish, it began flaking (chipping) off again. The young man who is doing the work is now faced with having to scrape every inch of paint off the ceiling, so the paint will adhere (it adheres to the parts he scraped, but not over the old paint that's up there). He is overwhelmed! Surely, there must be a better way to do this. Can anyone offer any suggestions?? The ceiling looks like it's sections of some kind of board material, with strips of wood (also painted white) covering where the sections of board meet.

I fought a similar problem in my house with plaster walls. What I did was to scrape off what came off easily, then primed with Zinsser 123. As I had expected, the Zinsser stabilized the wall and I was able to paint it successfully.

Over the years, I have come to whole-heartedly believe in applying a coat of primer over almost anything that is not on the verge of perfection to avoid problems later on.

Hope this helps.

Originally posted by chfite
I fought a similar problem in my house with plaster walls. What I did was to scrape off what came off easily, then primed with Zinsser 123. As I had expected, the Zinsser stabilized the wall and I was able to paint it successfully.

Over the years, I have come to whole-heartedly believe in applying a coat of primer over almost anything that is not on the verge of perfection to avoid problems later on.

Hope this helps.

:) Thanks so much, Chris. I forwarded your response to the person doing the painting (and scraping!).