2 Answers

There is no woodwork painted with lead based paint worth sanding. Lead paint breathed in as dust will make forgetting things a lifetime occupation. I suggest you move, especially if you have children and inspect the house you are to move into for lead and asbestos. I have had to remove lead paint from antique furniture of considerable value. There are furniture restoration businesses that have dip tanks that strip furniture of all paint over night and their rates are usually reasonable. A 120 year of dresser I had stripped cost $25.00 in 1995. Two weeks of work and it sold for $3700.00 but I thought it was worth a bit more. I had purchased it for $285.00 a month before. Never sand lead painted surfaces. If its a carved door way, painted ten times by hippies with buckets of old lead paint…pry it off and take it to a dip tank.

See if you can hire an extraction sander.It's a sander that hooks up to an industrial vacuum cleaner with a special filter. Send the kids away for the day & clean up when you are finished,you don't want them ingesting any of the dust.