Lisa

Hello,
We recently bought a rustic house that is finished with beautiful barn siding on the walls. They have quite a bit of remnant red paint. They are from an old barn in Iowa, and I have no idea how old they are. In much of the area, the red color seems to have seeped into the wood. I. Other parts, you can peel some of the paint off.
My concern is this: We have small children and are concerned about any possible toxic metals in the red paint.
We have tested it for lead with a home 3M kit and it came back negative. I have read that all paint before 1978 was lead-based. Should we test again with another product? What is your experience with old red barn paint? Also, any other toxic metals we should be concerned about with the red paint? I wish I knew how old it is. It is definitely more grayish/brown than red. All the info I can find about barn paint is about the 1700’s and 1800’s time period.

Thank you very much,
Lisa