re: Advice on woodwork paint problem

UPDATE:

A guy I know is in the paint business for 35 years. I stopped by his office this morning and showed him the pics and a piece of the paint I took off. First thing he commented on was the thickness of the paint piece, he said that is a bunch of coats of paint that were put on through the years. He said it's possible it could be moisture. He lent me a moisture meter and said that as long as the reading was in the green on the dial, it probably was not moisture.

Went to the house and stuck the leads into the raw wood and into the painted wood in a bunch of places. All the readings were in the green. I thought maybe the meter wasn't working, so I got a handful of water and rubbed it into the raw wood and let it sit for a few minutes. Stuck in the lead and it was buried in the red.

I called him and told him and asked him what could have caused it. He said that it might be that the existing paint had already let go of the old, dry wood, but with all the paint coats it may have been so thick that it was not noticeable. And when I paint over with latex paint, the shrinking of the drying latex loosened it up even more and caused it to bubble up in a few spots. And maybe with the extra cold temperatures this winter, with the cold on the outside and heat on the inside of a poorly insulated wall, it caused the wood to move around a lot and put stress on those weak spots where the old paint was not adhered well to the wood. In other words, he's not sure what caused it.

He said for me to scrape off as much loose paint as I could and then sand the raw wood and surrounding area, put a coat of oil based primer, fill with spackling or wood filler as smooth as possible, sand again, second coat of spackle if needed, coat of latex primer on spackled spots and then finish coat of paint.

Thanks to anyone who offered advice.