Lead Paint and Repainting an Old House in Delaware County

Repainting a pre-1978 house is one of the most common ways lead ends up in the air of an older home. The paint on the wall is rarely the problem. The scraper, the sander, and the heat gun are.

Assume it is there

Lead was banned in residential paint in 1978. Houses built before that can have it, and the older the house, the better the odds and, generally, the more lead in the paint. A stone farmhouse from the 1800s, a 1920s twin, and a 1962 split-level all land on the same side of the line. EPA's advice to homeowners is to assume any pre-1978 home has lead paint until a test says otherwise.

The age of the top coat tells you almost nothing. Lead paint can sit under a dozen later layers, so a room painted last spring may still have 1920s lead-based paint two or three coats down.

Intact, well-bonded paint is not an emergency. Trouble starts when it gets disturbed. Sanding, dry scraping, heat stripping, and demolition all turn paint into chips and fine dust, and ordinary wear does the same thing more slowly. Window sashes, door edges, stair treads, and porch floors grind their paint down every time they move or get walked on, which is why those surfaces get so much attention. The dust settles on floors and sills, children pick it up on their hands, and hands go to mouths. Health agencies do not recognize any blood lead level as safe for children, and that is the reason for the rules in the next section.

What the EPA rule requires of contractors

The federal Renovation, Repair and Painting rule, shortened to RRP, covers paid work that disturbs paint in housing and child-occupied facilities built before 1978. Painters, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and property managers doing turnover work all fall under it. The firm has to be EPA-certified, and that includes a one-person company. Each job needs a Certified Renovator, someone who has completed an eight-hour EPA-approved course, and the other workers on site have to be trained in lead-safe practices, either as renovators themselves or on the job by one.

Pennsylvania is not one of the states that runs its own RRP program, so EPA is the certifying authority for firms working in Delaware County. Separately, Pennsylvania certifies lead inspectors, risk assessors, and abatement workers under its own law. That is a different track from RRP.

The rule has a size threshold. Interior work that disturbs six square feet or less of paint per room, and exterior work that disturbs 20 square feet or less, counts as minor maintenance. Window replacement and demolition are covered regardless of size. The threshold matters less than it sounds. Scraping the trim, soffits, and clapboards on an old house passes 20 square feet within the first hour, so nearly every paid exterior repaint lands under the rule.

Before work starts, the firm has to give the owner and occupants EPA's Renovate Right pamphlet and document that it did. On the job, it has to contain the work area with plastic sheeting and signs and keep dust and debris from leaving it. A few methods are prohibited outright: open-flame burning, heat guns that run hotter than 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit, and power sanding, grinding, or needle-gun removal unless the tool has a shroud attached to a HEPA vacuum. Cleanup means HEPA vacuuming and wet wiping, followed by a cleaning verification step, and the firm keeps its records for three years. EPA's own fact sheet puts the maximum penalty above $40,000 per violation, which explains why established firms treat the rule seriously.

Homeowners doing their own work in their own home are not covered. The exemption ends if the home is rented, if a childcare business operates in it, or if the work is part of a buy, renovate, and sell project. Where the exemption does apply, EPA still recommends the same practices. Dust behaves the same way no matter who is holding the scraper.

Testing before anyone scrapes

Testing turns an assumption into information. It can also save money, since lead-safe practices add labor and a negative result on a component can simplify the job.

There are two levels. Swab kits are cheap and quick, and EPA recognizes only a short list of them for use under the RRP rule. Used correctly, with the swab reaching through every layer, a recognized kit can rule lead out on a particular component. It is a screening tool and not an inspection. A certified lead inspector can test with an X-ray fluorescence analyzer or by sending paint chip samples to a laboratory, and can tell you which components actually contain lead. A certified risk assessor does that and also evaluates hazards such as deteriorated paint and settled dust.

Dust deserves its own attention. After an RRP job, most firms verify cleaning by wiping surfaces with disposable cloths and comparing them to a reference card. A homeowner who wants more assurance, particularly with young children in the house, can hire a dust sampling technician to take wipe samples for laboratory analysis. Since January 2025, EPA treats any amount of lead in dust that a recognized lab can report as a hazard, so a small nonzero result still means something.

Old paint is more than a lead question

Old houses collect paint the way old riverbeds collect silt. A single wall might carry linseed oil paint, a milk paint or limewash from before that, several generations of oil enamel, and a latex topcoat from the last owner. Each behaves differently under new paint, and what is underneath decides how the job has to go.

Calcimine, also spelled kalsomine, is a good example. It is a chalky, water-soluble finish that was common on plaster ceilings in the first half of the twentieth century. Latex applied over it can lift and peel in sheets, so it has to be washed off or otherwise dealt with first. Oil-based trim paint needs a scuff sand and a compatible primer before latex goes on. Loose paint over sound plaster means scraping back to a stable edge, feathering, and priming, not a thick topcoat and hope. The right answer varies by house, which is the argument for a painter who has done this on old surfaces before.

Cracked plaster should be repaired before it is painted. Paint over a live crack and it tends to reopen within a season or two. The guide on plaster wall cracks covers what a real repair involves.

Windows are where lead risk and restoration overlap most. Sashes rub, so their paint wears into dust constantly. A window that gets contained work, proper stripping, and glazing repair is a different job from a quick scrape and a coat of paint. The wood window restoration guide goes into that.

Masonry needs a separate decision. Old brick and soft stone let moisture out through the surface, and a film-forming coat can interfere with that and is very hard to reverse. The guide on repointing with lime mortar explains more about how old masonry handles moisture.

Exterior color is worth checking before anyone buys gallons. Some historic districts review paint colors and others do not. The guide on permits and historic districts explains how review varies across the county.

Wallpaper adds its own complications. Old houses often have several layers, sometimes over painted plaster and sometimes under paint. Steaming and scoring are wet methods, which helps with dust, but they can lift the paint beneath the paper, and that paint should be treated as possibly leaded. A small number of Victorian-era papers used arsenic-based green pigments. They are uncommon, and intact paper is not the worry, but vivid green paper found under later layers deserves a lab test before anyone scrapes or sands it. Reproduction papers matched to period patterns are made by specialty firms, and a good wallcovering installer will know how to prepare old plaster so the paper holds.

If you are buying or selling

Federal law requires sellers and landlords of pre-1978 housing to disclose known lead paint and lead hazards and to hand over an EPA pamphlet. For sales, buyers also get a window to test, ten days unless both sides agree to something different, and they can waive it. A buyer who plans to repaint or renovate right after closing should decide before settlement whether testing is worth doing, since the results shape both the budget and the choice of contractor.

Questions to ask a painter

Price alone tells you little on an old house. A bid far below the others often leaves out the containment and cleanup. These questions sort out who has done this before.

• Can you show the firm's EPA Lead-Safe Certification and the Certified Renovator's certificate for this job?
• Will I receive the Renovate Right pamphlet and sign for it before work starts?
• How will you contain the work area, and what happens to the debris?
• Which surfaces will you scrape, chemically strip, or leave alone, and why?
• How do you handle cleanup, and how do you verify it?
• What do you do when you find something unexpected, like calcimine or rotted trim, partway through?

Written answers to these belong in the scope of work. If work was done without containment while a young child or a pregnant person lived in the house, a pediatrician or physician can order blood lead testing.