problems with burning off paint - can anyone help?

[carlajean]

I'm doing up an old house and, because the paintwork is so bad, decided to burn it off. Unfortunately, under the topmost layer, which comes off very easily, there's a layer of green paint that turns into sticky sludge and is very difficult to get off, so it looks like I'll have to use the sander after all.
Has anyone got any advice (apart from don't do it).

How old is the house? If it's likely to be lead-based paint (sounds like it might be) then don't burn it off. You need to either revert to one of the specialised paint removers or old fashioned scraper and use an appropriate face mask not just for the stripping but the clean-up afterwards too.

It'll sand off much more easily when it's been made brittle with the heat.

I don't know if you're up for rogue suggestions but I discovered recently that some castile soaps will strip oil based paint. The one I found is Dr Bronner's. It's really expensive, and concentrated so maybe that's why, but you could try it with something cheaper. Apply it neat and leave it a few days and in my case it led to paint you could literally wipe off.

And no, in case you were interested, I did not actually want to remove the paint from my bathrooms walls in splash patterns created by my soap dispenser.

I would have used paint stripper in the first instance. Have only used a heat gun on wood. If you think that the layers may be quite deep then you really need to use a mask in case of lead.

Now you've melted the under paint stripper might not work but I'd try that before going to scraping.

yes, how old is the paint, and is it a wall or woodwork? If a wall, is it in the bathroom?

well, in the end, I thought 'I've started, so I'll have to finish' and got off what I could. The problem was that the upper gloss came off beautifully but the stuff underneath (probably very old and full of lead, as it's a Victorian house and the colour is Oxford Green) turned first to thick claggy goo, then, in the blink of an eye, to solid lumps that the electric sander hardly affected. (It was on the woodwork in the kitchen, Piglet john)
I tried paint remover, but Nitromoors has had something taken out that makes it work (probably the same thing that would give you cancer I guess) and was absolutely useless.
So, thanks for all the advice, but I just shouldn't have started.