Damp areas in kitchen

[Bloodybridget]

There are two areas in our kitchen where the paint just flakes and falls off, both on interior walls. I tried rubbing down and repainting a couple of years ago, but the same thing happened very quickly. The kitchen is semi basement. We're thinking about repainting the whole room ourselves soon; I just saw that Dulux Easycare Kitchen Matt is recommended, but I'm not sure this will solve the problem. Should we put some kind of sealant on first? TIA for any suggestions.

You need to find what's causing the damp and fix that. Anything else is just covering it up temporarily and will inevitably need redoing in the short to medium term.

@wowfudge thanks for responding, sorry not to have replied sooner. Quite right of course, but it's hard to figure out what could be the cause. One area is on one side of an old chimney breast where the cooker now stands, the other side is fine.

Probably the old chimney breast. Really prone to damp.

Yes quite likely, @LuluJakey1. We can't dismantle it - well, we're not going to - so I just need to do something to make it look ok for as long as possible. It's only since the last time we had it painted, maybe four years ago, that this has been a problem.