Hi All, About to undertake some bathroom renovation; the current bath is 1960's cast iron, I'd like to retain it if I can. Has anyone any experience with getting baths restored in situ? Is it worth considering or a complete waste of money?
TIA, Martin.
Good lord! why? they were horrible.. Was it that nice pink colour that was popular then?
A friend had his done. The company had to have 2 attempts to try and get a decent finish. So I decided against it esp. as new enamalled steel baths are quite resonably priced now and look so much better
I don't really understand why a steel bath should look better than a (re-enamelled) cast iron one. What's the difference from the outside?
Umm. The ral issue is teh 'in situ' bit.
The correct way to re-enamel is to coat the bath in a ceramic glaze, and fire it in a huge furnace., In situ consists in painting and fillig with typically epoxy resin - in short, making an acrylic bath out of a steel one.
My final thoughts on baths are
(i) cast irion is cold, chips, rusts and lookes orrible, (ii) Cheap pressed steel isslightly less cold, but otherwise still as bad, and flexes badly. (iii) Cheap plastic is warm, but otherwise as bad as cheap steel (iv) large thick cast resin baths are the best of the lot. If they chip, at least the resin fix is using the same material the bath was made of.
PS I am of the minority that thinks that victorian plumbing is ghastly, ugly and all plumbing and baths bottoms are about as attractive as a nudist camp of the terminally obese, and should be screened on the grounds of offending public taste as much as possible. .
>Hi,
Yep - got mine done. It was expensive (around about £200 I think - it was a present so I'm not 100% sure) but the bath looks like new. We mostly shower so don't use our bath a lot so I'm not sure how it would cope with a lot of (ab)use. The process is quite skilled. The guy who did ours had qualifications in advanced spraying techniques etc so I guess you have to be very careful who you choose. It took him a full day to do.
Alan.
Just go an look at a new steel one in a showroom ...
Hi Martin, If you were to give me marks out of ten for DIY competence I'd be lucky to get five and a half so trust me when I tell you its a relatively easy job. The secret is proper preparation of the bath's surface and a Tubby re-enamel bath kit which can be bought from Brandon marketing (Tel 01303 788138) for about £42. My bath - Victorian cast iron - was in a pretty bad state and I had no idea how successful DIY re-enamel was going to be. The Tubby kit is simple to use so long as you carefully prepare the bath by removing all the old paint and sanding it down. It took me three days to get the bath ready and about two hours to apply the new paint. You need to keep the bath dry for at least 24 hours and never use a bath mat as that really messes up the enamel. Good luck, Joe
In message , Martin writes
We have just re-enamelled using "tubby"
It was a total mess because the roller wouldn't roll. I wasn't going to post the results until I had finished discussions with the vendors who may or may not be giving me a replacement kit.
The finish, if it wasn't so rough due to the problem with the roller looks like it would have been quite good
Watch this space -I will report back when this is brought to a conclusion
The professional who did mine manually cleaned up any rusty bits then used an acid solution to thoroughly clean the bath, fixed the worst bits with something which was akin to filling dents in a car with cataloy then sprayed on numerous coats of various substances including enamel which was baked on using IR heaters (these really took a LOT of power to run - the cables were very warm - as was the bath!). Not as good as putting it into a furnace but to me, sufficient to do the job and a lot different to this "tubby" stuff. I consider myself a very serious DIY'er and would do most things but I wouldn't consider doing this myself - much like I wouldn't respray a car myself. I would recommend anyone get it done - your only trouble is finding a "good" tradesperson.
As for looks, it is IMHO miles better than a modern plastic reproduction and as an "original feature", adds value to the house.
Alan.
In message , Alan Campbell writes
Well I got a phone call today from Brandon Marketing today, they apologised for the defective goods and are going to send me a replacement kit. It will be with me on Monday
So, a result.
For a budget solution, apart from the problem with the roller, it gives quite a good finish
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