Cheating on My Tub
Vicki and I scraped the paint off the bathroom window this weekend. Now the bathroom is a hundred times more beautiful. It's a beacon of light at the top of the stairs.
The funny thing is, it took me 10 months to realize all the windows upstairs are all plexiglas. I guess I just ignored them because they were covered in paint. I was probably fooled by the really nice replacement windows downstairs, also. I just assumed these were good quality too. When in fact, they are the crappiest aluminum frame and plexiglas replacement windows you could buy. Oh well. I'm going have to live with 'em for now because there's definitely no money in the budget for 5 new windows.
Mostly, I've been working on my tub last weekend. Vicki and I got it all cleaned up inside. It's in fair shape. There's a few divets in the porcelain, and the bottom has some etching, and there is some rust creeping in around the drain, but that's pretty standard for a really old tub like this. I started stripping the paint off the outside of the tub because I read you should remove the old stuff before repainting.
WARNING: Boring home improvement details ahead. Don't say I didn't warn you.
There are about 4 layers of paint on the tub but only half of it is painted. The side that was against the wall and on the bottom aren't painted. Those surfaces have a lot of rust.
I used some standard paint stripper but it only worked for the top 3 layers of paint. The bottom layer is probably some kind of oil-based enamel and didn't respond well to the stripper. It just kind of made it googey and spread it around.
From my research I figured out the way you're supposed to do this is strip all the paint off the tub, grind, sand or use hydrochloric acid to remove the rust down to the metal and then repaint with and oil-based enamel. My friend Regina did this to her old tub. Apparently it took a long time and was a real big paint in the ass. So I've decided to take the easy way out of this one. Rust may eventually eat through the paint but I won't be living here when it does.
I sanded the tub last night with a big grinding wheel thing. I bought this thing that's like a big, hard Brillo pad that attaches to a drill. I pretty much wore down one of the two discs doing it, but the surface is definitely smoother. Well as smooth as the rusty outside of a cast iron tub can be. Tonight I'm just going to spray it with some Rust-o-leum car primer and then a coat of white Rust-o-leum oil-based enamel spray paint. The name of the game is 'good-enough.' I've got to get the tub out of the way of the floor refinisher this week so I have to get it done before it goes in the bathroom.