DO NOT PAINT YOUR BATHTUB (WnW #66)

hi so this is the second bathroom in our house or as we call it the kids bathroom you bring the camera in here so it's kind of a small room like most bathrooms are so I'm stuck using the action cam if I can get that on screen not much I can do about that we haven't done anything to this room since we bought the house like 18 years ago and we were beginning to think you know it's time for a refresh not a makeover just a refresh you know first we thought let's paint it however you know as things like that happen once you start thinking about it you start thinking well maybe this maybe this maybe this and so it's kind of spiraling hopefully it's not going to spiral out of control but in this video I'm going to focus on the tub this house was built 1984 and for whatever reason they put in a brown coffee cream sort of tub I know it could have been worse could have been pink could have been olive but either way we hate it but I am frankly not interested in replacing it because that involves tearing out walls tearing out that it's just not going to happen so other than the color there's really nothing wrong with it it means it's a solid steel tub it's great so instead of replacing this I'm going to paint it and I'm going to paint the tiles too I've done some reading online I found this kit is from rust-oleum no they're not a sponsor I've seen a few videos it's a two-part epoxy it's going to stink like the dickens but from what I've seen online it works pretty good I know it's not going to be as good as brand new but if I can get three to five years out of it I'll be pretty happy this is the tub paint kit that I bought at the big-box store this one's white lots of instructions there's lots of videos online that seem to cover this one the lady in the paint section also recommended I picked this etching creamed up it's supposed to help take off the glaze because you're going to sort of scuff the surface so that you can get a good good grip with the paint and boy my voice is echoing like crazy in this room this is one time when I think I better take the time to read the instruction so I'm going to stop the camera and go sit down you know the preparation might be the worst part of this job one two there's just no flattering camera angles in a room like this I almost forgot I'm going to clean the outside bottom too because that's going to get painted also I'm focusing on the inside okay so given that I had the etching cream I shouldn't need to use sandpaper but my friend john heiss said that when he did it he used sandpaper I really recommended using sandpaper and it shouldn't be that big a deal to what go over it okay that was miserable removing caulking Wow was that a pain in the butt so I started with 400 which didn't seem to do anything so I quickly switched to 240 the instructions say to 20 I got mixed up as I watched a bunch of videos and some of them give conflicting advice but the the sanding really didn't seem to do much I mean from the sandpaper you could know if you can see that because it was building up something but the tile really I couldn't tell that anything was happening on the tub it definitely seemed to get a little bit dull so I quickly moved on to using the acid etch crane and I have no video of that because I got kind of tensed because well it's like I'll put in a little clip here I mean it looks sort of like a cross between yogurt and jam it's really thick and so applying it was fine but then the time came to remove it you know you wait for minutes then you remove it and this stuff was so thick that you know it just clogged up my cloth so I'd wipe and rinse and rinse and wipe and rinse and wipe and rinse and it just it took me an hour to do the whole thing it was really really kind of unpleasant but it seemed to really do the job when you move the camera here and the tub you can definitely you can definitely see the tub is etched and has lost the glaze the walls got a really busy pattern so it's really hard to tell I'm going by the tub that I'm assuming that the wall is fine too so it's time to move on to taping wiping out of the tack cloth and then let's go on with painting and so this pain is a two-part epoxy it stinks like the dickens is what I'm told so I'll be putting on the full respirator so I don't think they're going to be any more narration at this point it's time to just get down to painting so it's now day two of what should be a one-day paint job and here's why so there are two main problems number one I ran out of paint that tub has had one coat this kit claims that you can cover a hundred square feet two coats i measured the walls here add up to around 68 square feet and that includes the front edge down below if that leaves you like 30 square feet for the tub that i did the best i could there and i'm i'm right around 100 square feet and yet there there was not enough paint to cover 100 square feet two coats and then the other thing is is the kit also says that really two coats is all you really should need there are two coats here on this wall and it's just not enough and and well you saw the before pictures this was not a dark tile this was a white modeled with brown and very light coffee cream sort of brown and so yeah we've had to go out and buy another kit and i will be doing more painting tonight i will be putting a third coat on the wall and i will be putting two coats two more coats on the tub and i'm not going to film any of that because frankly this is a real chore and i just want to get it done for the second round of painting i switched to using a roller and that went a lot better now i'd seen people using rollers in the video so why wasn't i using rollers in the first place well the kit that i had specifically recommended against using rollers in fact they recommended spraying or brushing and i'm not confident in my spraying ability so I stuck to rushing but the paint was so thin it was like painting with milk I worked in small sections I went back over it to brush it up but there were still a lot of runs the roller worked much better I think if possible try spray I added two more coats so in total I got four coats on the wall three and a half coats on tub the top edge got four coats the rest of the tub got three and in my opinion it is barely passable but I'm done I am not buying any more kids so the scent from this paint is really strong and it just was not dissipating now this is a windowless bathroom and I had the exhaust fan going for like 48 hours and the scent was just not clearing so what I did is I got a three-quarter sheet of OSB and I put that here across the corner of the hollow and that kind of joined the bathroom door with this bedroom door and then I put a fan in the bathroom blowing out of the bathroom and I put a fan in the bedroom window blowing out and I left that running for a day and that finally took care of about eighty ninety percent but that was like three days later almost and so if you do this just be prepared for the stench so the dry time also it took way longer than expected the instructions say it should be drying 36 hours and that in three days you can start using it you can get it wet well I left it longer because you know small room it's not very well ventilated and it was still just feeling just a little tacky but still after three days it felt dry and I'm sitting here and I'm putting the tap back on and the spell back in place and when I get up and I look and there was blue fibers that had been ripped out of my jeans and we're stuck you decided to paint now I washed it off he came off okay but it had felt dry hard when I sat down so I just like I wasn't going to mess around and I left it for like 10 days before I even finally came around and added the caulking to the corner and yeah just I was quite shocked at how long it really took to really harden up so are we happy with this oh no not really it looks good from over there in the doorway it's just when you get up close that you see all the runs and the drips and the unevenness I just I was expecting better I mean I knew it wasn't going to be perfect going into it but I was expecting better than I got the coverage was not there I mean first of all didn't cover 100 square feet like they said it would second of all one kits nowhere near enough I mean if you're going to do this by at least two kits right away maybe even three the costs are more than I was expecting because again I had to buy two kits so actually let's do that for a minute here the kit was fifty two dollars I needed two kits so there's 100 bucks the etching cream was thirty bucks I needed a new organic vapor respirator that's another fifty dollars and some other supplies so I amended this for about two hundred dollars so the runs the uneven coverage and the scent took a lot longer took a lot longer to dry than I was expecting so are we happy with this no are we tolerating it yeah are we okay with it almost these kids never clean this place you

Channel: Wordsnwood (Art Mulder)

Views: 1,007,401

Rating: 4.4142509 out of 5

Keywords: How-to, Do-It-Yourself, Rustoleum tub kit, Rustoleum, Rust-Oleum, Paint your bathtub, Tub Painting Fail, I painted my bathtub and it did not go as well as it should, I do not recommend painting your tub.

Id: mcbkb65UaLo

Length: 12min 5sec (725 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 25 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/wordsnwood]

Not all projects turn out awesome. So I hope this is accepted as a positive post here, and I hope others can learn from my experiences.

To Sum Up:

1. The kit did not cover as much as it said it would. (I ran out before I had two coats completed.)
2. The kit claimed that one kit was enough to do a tub+surround. IMHO that is not the case. I think you want two kits, or maybe three.
3. They recommend spraying or brushing. I tried brushing and I recommend rolling. (They recommend AGAINST rolling, even though there is a youtube video out published by the company, that shows rolling. I wish I had ignored the instructions and used the roller right from the beginning)
4. It's really really really thin. It's like painting with milk. I brushed it (first 2 coats), as recommended, and worked in small sections and went over it carefully, and I still had runs.
5. Be prepared for MANY days of stink. (Ours was a windowless bathroom)
6. It took much longer to dry/harden/cure than stated in the instructions.

Caveat Emptor.

[u/Toad32]

Never paint tile.

[u/xhosSTylex]

Unless you have some sort of vintage tub, it's almost never worth it to re-coat/glaze a tub. Plus, the fumes are dangerous. It's cheaper and less trouble to just buy a new one, even if you have to order it.

[u/[deleted]]

I rented a place that had the tub resurfaced. It completely sucked. Pieces were flaking off everywhere. I was afraid to really scrub/clean the surfaces because I could tell that the more I cleaned it, the more it flaked and the worse it looked.

The landlord actually gave me shit about the tub looking bad after I moved out even though I had been telling him about the crappy tub nearly every time we had a conversation about the house. Landlord was kind of a scumbag anyway, but other than the tub, the place was pretty nice and he was asking about half the rent I think he could have gotten from the place so I didn't complain too much. I still wouldn't recommend resurfacing a tub... Probably better to just deal with what is there until you can afford to rip it out and do it right.

[u/9100]

Yeah, painting tiles never ends well. Painting a bath (tub) would be even worse.

I skipped most of the video, but if the end result is that the painted finish looks dreadful and is full of marks and is peeling/cracking then I am not in the slightest bit surprised. You'll be ripping the lot out and fitting a new bath and re-tiling before the year is out.

[u/kcb2]

I chose a rattle-can tub spray from Home Depot when I did my tub. The glaze finish was wearing from the previous owner using abrasive cleaners. It went on OK, and looked acceptable (probably more of what OP was hoping for).

I was selling the house and we had already moved out, so I just wanted it to look good through showing - I really didn't care what it looked like after 10 showers. I have been tempted to go back and ask the new owner how it's holding up.

[u/fonts-a-tron]

When I remodeled my bathroom 2yrs ago, I couldn't find a tub for the size opening I had. I got a quote of over $800 for a pro to refinish the original steel tub. I decided to use this same kit and do it myself. Spend hours preparing the tub and rolled 3 coats. There was too much orange peel when it cured so I wet sanded and buffed it. Came out great. Tub gets used every day and there's no signs of the finish wearing. Would definitely use again

[u/Gregorovitch1856]

Is this stuff for tile only? Iv got one of those cheep mobile home tubs think is like fiberglass or something and were getting ready to sell in a few months thought it would really make it look better then it is. Thanks for the video !

[u/Toddspickle]

I have this stuff in my amazon wish list. I guess I'll remove it. Thanks for showing us the process and result OP, it's definitely appreciated.