bathroom tub and tile refinishing??

[jerlenborn]

Hello neighbors, can anyone recommend a person or system to refinish 1940 bathroom tub and reglaze ceramic tile? Any help will be appreciated. Barbara

[gfretwell]

Unless this is some spectacular tile, you are usually better off replacing it. The closest you get to "reglazing" is epoxy paint.

[Mayayana]

| Hello neighbors, can anyone recommend a person or system to refinish 1940 bathroom tub and reglaze ceramic tile? |

A person? without narrowing it down closer than the Western hemisphere? You should be able to find tub reglazers near you. They come in and etch the porcelain with acid, then spray a fast-dry finish. If it's done well, and the tub is smooth, without cracks or chips, it should look nice and last for years. It won't look quite as nice as a new tub, but close.

They can do the same with tile, but it will be noticeable because it will also glaze the grout. Cleaning and bleaching the grout might be better. But if the tile looks tired and old then a glaze finish might be a nice improvement.

I've dealt with a half dozen such people. All did a job of equivalent quality. It helps if you prep it yourself. Clean off any existing caulk and recaulk only after the reglazing. Otherwise they'll glaze right over the caulking.

If you have a contractor, ask them for a reference. If not, and you don't have friends who have had it done, you might just look for local ads. for "tub reglazing".

[micky]

My mother hired a blind painter to do the inside of our house. I don't know how blind he was, because I was at school while he was working.

She removed all the wall-plates and anything else that would slow him down while he was painting and she saved a significant amount of money by doing so.

I'm not recommending hiring blind people here, though that's nice too. Just doing as much of the work as one can oneself. They'll charge you to do it, or they won't do it at all, or they'll do some but not all, and the job will suffer for it.

[dadiOH]

Both the tub and tiles have had a material applied; they were then heated until that material vitrified, i.e., until the material became glass. That glass is not replaceable, best that can be done is to paint them; the best paint is probably two part epoxy.

If you want something long lasting that looks good, just replace them.

[Ed Pawlowski]

That would be my choice. There is no really good looking permanent way to fix wall time, but it is also expensive to have replaced.

After the kitchen, the bathroom is the most expensive room to renovate. You can easily spend $15,000 to $50,000 depending on the quality of the materials and extent of the labor needed.

[gfretwell]

These are also the places where "do it yourself" can return the greatest value. Tile is not really that hard if you are not in a hurry. If you shop around, the materials can be reasonable too. Most places have tile outlet stores that sell odd lots of tiles and with some planning, you can use an assortment of different tiles to create a very good looking room. When we did our guest bath, we found designer tiles for less than a buck a square foot.

[micky]

How does one get two part epoxy on smoothly? Don't you have to mix it and brush it on? If so, how can it be smooth? It's not going to work as nicely as latex, will it. It will run, sag, and even if not that, something that will look funny, won't it?

I ask partly because I bought a kit to repair part of my bathtub, but I've been hesitating. It's not a big enough problem to warrant replacing the tub, but I would like to repair it.

[Mayayana]

| >After the kitchen, the bathroom is the most expensive room to renovate. | > You can easily spend $15,000 to $50,000 depending on the quality of | >the materials and extent of the labor needed. | | These are also the places where "do it yourself" can return the | greatest value. Tile is not really that hard if you are not in a | hurry.

I wouldn't have said that. The OP wasn't asking about tile options, anyway. But that aside, I don't think very many people can do a good job with tile, especially on first try. It only looks good if one has a good eye for detail, which many people don't. The most common problem I see is actually the easiest to avoid: Too much grout. But it's a very common problem. And that's not even getting into the issues of basic skills: knowing about grout, dealing with uneven surfaces, planning a layout that doesn't result in tile slivers being used, etc.