Re-glazing A Sink or Tub

Re-glazing A Sink or Tub

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DIY, House progress, paint, refinish, tutorial

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What do you do when you can't get rid of your old sink or tub but it's worn, the wrong color, or ugly?  Re-glaze it!  "But that's pricey!" you say! "You need to hire professionals!" you say!  Well, I say, "Forget about it. I got your re-glazin' right here!" 

Let's go back to the beginning. We bought this house fully knowing there were going to be some bathroom guts in our future.  Now we realize it's in the far off future so I'm trying to freshen them up the best I can with what I have to work with which is basically, um, nothing! 

You've seen the girls' yellow bathroom before but I never showed you this:

or this:

It wasn't just that it was 1973 yellow. It was rusted, cracked, wearing away 1973 yellow. 1973 yellow that may have spent too much time at Woodstock makin' love not war.  It drove me crazy that my sweet girls brushed their teeth using that sink. What kind of mother am I?  As if they won't have enough fodder for the therapist...now they'll have weird phobias involving sinks.

So off I went to the Home Depot (which I always read as dee-pot in my head) and bought myself some tub, sink, and tile epoxy.

(which leads me to a story...imagine. So here I am, little Miss Sorta DIY Blogger looking for this. I asked the big, Mr. Must Know All Things DIY Because He Had Lots of Chest Hair Peeping Out Clerk who leads me to the spray paint and told me to use white spray paint.  Thanks. Go mix paint. I gotta find the right stuff.)

It was super easy and while it doesn't give super professional results, it definitely makes me want to hurl less.  A +!

You'll need 4 consecutive hours to complete a sink about this big. I would imagine a tub would be somewhere in the 6 hour range even though the box says differently. Everything I needed came in the box too. The cleaning agent, gloves, brush, epoxy paint, steel wool.

Step 1:

Thoroughly wash the sink with the enclosed cleaning agent and a sponge. Rinse with warm water. Dry with paper towels. Rub with a super soft steel wool pad. The steel wool didn't look like it did much but I guess it did. Rinse, dry again. REPEAT for a total of 3x.

Step 2:  Using painter's tape, tape off anything you don't want painted.  This was a pain since there are round edges all over the place here and that metal band is a killer. But I found that using a narrow straight edge box cutter thingee made a great clean edge. I just ran it around the sliced off the bits of painter's tape I didn't want.

This yellow is waaaaaay off. It was not this yellow.

This color is way off too. It wasn't this light.

Step 3: Stir the epoxy and start painting using a little bit of product on the brush. Light coats are best. It is a self leveling product and you need to work fast as it thickens and settles almost immediately. I found using light, feathery strokes in the same direction helped.

Step 4: Wait 2-4 hours and then apply the second coat. If you wait longer than 4 hours you need to let it cure for 72 hours before applying the second coat. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT go on Pinterest to pass the time or else you'll be waiting 72 hours. Oh stop. You know it's true.

Step 5: Take the tape off gently. I didn't wait until it was fully cured. I guess I took it off after about 4-5 hours.   Then we went on vacation for a few days so after 72 hours it looks like this!

Molly is mad. She liked it the old way.  Geez.  And I took these pics at night. It really is a bright white and it feels just like porcelain. It isn't quite as smooth as a factory finish but it is pretty darn close!

I'm happy. I have some touch ups to do but it's still so much better than it was.

Cheers!
Jenny