Painters & Painting Services in Ottawa

Three dates that decide the answer

Health Canada's guidance is built on build year. A home probably contains lead-based paint if it was built before 1960. If it was built between 1960 and 1990, the exterior may contain lead-based paint, and interior surfaces may contain lead in smaller amounts that could still be harmful, especially to young children.

Houses built after 1990 should not contain lead, because consumer paints produced in Canada and the United States were virtually lead-free by then.

Ottawa's housing stock straddles all three. A century home in the Glebe or Sandy Hill sits in the first category, a 1970s Alta Vista bungalow in the second, and a Barrhaven or Kanata build in the third. The question is answerable before anyone quotes: send paint chip samples to a lab, or bring in a contractor with x-ray equipment that reads lead through a painted surface.

Sound old paint is often safer left alone

Health Canada's position is that leaving lead-based paint alone is sometimes safer than removing it, as long as it is not chipping and not within reach of children, and that covering the area with wallpaper, wallboard or panelling adds security. It becomes a serious hazard when it is chipping or flaking, or within reach of a child who might chew it.

That reframes the conversation with a painter. On an older house the choice is not always strip or do not strip. Encapsulation is a legitimate answer, and a contractor who reaches for a sander by default has skipped the question.

The three tools to rule out on a pre-1960 surface

1. Sanders. Health Canada is explicit: do not use sanders on lead-based paint, because they create toxic dust containing lead.
2. Heat guns, for the same reason, plus fumes.
3. Blowlamps. Where removal is genuinely needed, the method named instead is a chemical paint stripper paste applied with a brush.

Keep children and anyone pregnant away from the work area, isolate it by covering doorways and vents with plastic sheeting, and ventilate outward by setting a fan to blow air out of an open window, working from the fan backwards so fumes move away from the person holding the brush.

Where the scrapings go afterwards

Health Canada asks that paint scrapings and chips go into a sealed container marked Hazardous Waste and be disposed of according to the instructions of the local municipality. In Ottawa that means the City's household hazardous waste service rather than the curb, and the City refuses containers larger than 20 litres and loads over 100 litres.

The work area is wiped down with a clean damp cloth at the end of each day and the cloth thrown away. Ask a painter how they handle that step on an older house. It is the part of the job that never appears in a quote and is the clearest signal of whether they have done one before.