What to do about walls with peeling, blistering paint?

i can peel off 4 layers of paint in many spots! will i have to remove all the paint on the walls? or leave some of the paint that seems to adhere well? would that make the walls uneven? can i just prime after that and just paint 2 coats?What to do about walls with peeling, blistering paint?
If the peeling paint is that deep - four layers - chances are that you have some source of water causing the paint to separate from the wall board. Does the wall feel cool to the touch? That's moisture. If it's cool everywhere you touch it could be humidity in the air, but no matter what, the original paint either did not adhere well, or the later paint was incompatible with it and caused it all to loosen.


I recommend you strip all the paint off or you're going to have a painted surface that resembles the moon -- full of pock marks. Then if you find sagging or bubbled areas in the wallboard itself, carefully cut through them and see what's going on behind there in case of a plumbing problem. You'll know whether you need a plumber or not if you find dripping pipes or mold. If your walls are not wall board but are plaster and you get blistering paint on plaster, that is an absolute sign of water infiltration from the other side. It could be leaking from a window that doesn't seal, sprinklers hitting old siding, even a leak in the roof that travels down a joist and enters the wall above the blistered paint. Unless you live in a really rainy area, though, this kind of paint damage is more likely from a source right near the spot, not on the roof.


If it's peeling due to normal humidity in your area, once you get the paint off, lightly sand the wall board, you may even want to apply a very thin coat of spackle to even out lumpy places. If the wallboard doesn't really need smoothing, paint it with two, yes TWO coats of KILZ primer, let it dry a day between each coat, then another day afterward. Then use two new coats of paint, drying one day between each coat. Kilz is the best thing I've found for this stuff. Good luck.