Our bathroom is an ugly off-green colour. Not relaxing in any way, shape or form, as I am sure many of you will agree. Many of you will not agree, but that just means that you’ve never actually seen our bathroom.
The next problem comes from the fact that our bathroom is in our house. That we are renting. The landlord replaced most of the kitchen between the old tenants and the time we moved in, but did not do anything to the bathroom. We figure that he will have no problem with us financing a small upgrade to the bathroom, but we don’t want to spend too much money. It’s only a rental property that we’re likely to be moved out of in a couple of years. We’ve been there just over four years at the moment, so we’re clearly not in a huge rush, but don’t want to drop thousands of dollars on someone elses bathroom. And after 4 years of looking at the sickly puky green, we need to do something about it. Either change it or move out. It’s come to that.
In my travels, investigating the idea of tile paint, I’ve had it recommended to me by one handyman, not recommended to me by one salesman at the hardware store, and have seen many thrilling stories about it on the DIY TV shows. But half the time I know they do the minimum amount of work to get it to look shiny, with no care for how it looks down the line.
I also came across this potentially helpful account of bathroom tile paint from StarvingButStrong that was posted a couple of years ago. I figure by now there’s been a chance for the shiny newness of the bathroom tile paint to be worn off, and I am looking for a review of “aged” tile paint in a bathroom.
If anyone happens along who has experience the good and bad side of tile paint, please share your stories here. And help me not have to pack up all our stuff… we’ve managed to accumulate a lot of extra crap in the four years we’ve been in this house.
Well, if you paint tile, it will look like…painted tile. You could do something fancy with faux finishes (check a big box store for brochures and ideas) or painting in the grout lines, which is tedious.
There are two-part epoxy paints you can use, but it’s not necessary really, for a rental you don’t want to invest much in. A decent quality oil based enamel will hold up well. Clean the walls thoroughly. Cut in first, then roll, using one of those little “slim jim” rollers. You’ll need two coats and it will smell awful.
IAAPC. (I am a painting contractor.)
There is a product out called Tough As Tile that is basically a tile reglazing kit - it can be found at Home Depot and places like that - there are a number of people who I know personally that have used it who said it works like a charm.
I hate to say this, but I advise against performing any upgrade, repair or improvement to rented property. It’s bad juju. Seriously. If it’s come to improve or move then move. Aside from the fact that you’ll be putting your time and money into someone else’s investment, your landlord could decide he doesn’t like it and make you pay to make it the way it was. Or you could inadvertnatly damage the property while making the repairs, or a host of other things you can’t forsee that jeopardize you.
Yes, good product. But two warnings. Follow their instructions to the letter. No leway. Serious. And second, make sure that when doing the cleaning as per the instructions, that yyou get it perfectly clean. I mean it. If you do these two things, this is a fantastic product. If you don’t, you will think the product sucks.
I’ve also painted a few, and you clean the tile exceptionally well, and use an alkyd paint (yipper, two coats, as the poster above said), than you can get an adequate job. But, then again, maybe you won’t. Sometimes, no matter how well you prep the tile, even scuffing it up for adhesion issues and what not, it might peel anyways.
But, both ideas are much cheaper than retiling, and can be done in just a few hours of actual work time. Of course, for drying and recoating, you’ll actually be without your bathroom for a weekend, you know.
Thanks for the guidance guys. After some discussion with the wife, I think we’ll end up simply repainting the non-tile areas (they are a bit flaky, and ugly). That’s not much work, not expensive, and if we simply repaint it white, the original colour, the landlord can’t really want us to reverse it.
Unless the flaky paint was intentional, in a haunted house kinda way.
Of course we’ll still ask for permission. Hell, the dude might even offer to do it for us. He keeps asking to mow our lawn for us…
If that fails to give us the satisfactory bathroom we crave, then I guess we’ll be house hunting sooner than we’d hoped.
On preview I notice that Every Loves Monkeys, but not tile paint. Another mark against it.