I was talking to my sister Christine on the phone the other day and was telling her about all the work i was doing in my bathroom. "Can you paint tile!!!?", she asked me as if i was totally retarded. "Yes, of course you can paint tile" i said. "If you have paint and a brush, you can certainly paint tile", I said as a matter of fact. But i know what she meant - will it stick? And the answer is an astounding, NO!
We are getting ready to sell the house - again - and i decided to spiff up the bathroom. When we tiled the basement a few years ago, we had so much tile left over that we tiled the entry-way to catch all the crud. And still there was so much tile left over that i decided one day i would do the bathroom floor too. That one day was now. When our house was for sale last summer on the internet, i kept thinking that the photo of the bathroom surely must have scared some potential buyers away. It's a room that screams for a re-do from an earlier 1960's re-don't.
My friend, Dan up the street, had his tile painted and some others that i know had their tile painted and it looks pretty darn good. Dan said the paint was just slightly pealing around the water pipes. So i took a look but the pealing is so slight it's not even worth mentioning. I decided that if the paint can hold up to every day use, than i can easily paint my tile too for a fresher looker on the internet and hopefully attract a buyer.
So first i needed to buy the right color paint. I went to the paint shop and picked out the perfect color to match my tile, "Earth 112" and then went one shade lighter to "Earth 110" as a small color chip is ALWAYS surprisingly darker than what you'd expect it to be. The color was a beautiful yellow but not at all what i wanted. How could i have been so far off!? I am a color correcter by trade so i was taken by surprise to see how wrong i was. I went back to the paint shop to take a look again at the color chart and it IS the right color - on the chart but sooooooo wrong when painted on the tile. I was telling the paint man my situation and he said that it didn't really matter which color i chose because they are all ugly. Great help he was. So i tried to second guess the color chart and went with another "close" choice. But i was afraid that it may end up being too rosy. This time the color matched perfectly - to the color chart - rosy, And that was not what i wanted either. I needed something in the brownish, orangish tone.
But rosy is what i ended up with because this could go on forever. I realized afterwards that the color carousel used for mixing colors was extremely old in an old paint shop, owned and operated by an old guy who could care less and thought every color was ugly. It's the color carousel that needed cleaning.
Anyway.... the color is very light and pale so it will work fine for selling purposes. I went into the shop to buy oil paint. The shop keeper said that oil was not necessary and that i could just use "this". He's the expert and what do i know? So as i am about to pay for the paint ,another shop assistant said to me - "Hey! don't forget the primer! You need primer or the paint wont stick!" Thank god he was listening to my conversation with the shop owner. So i come home and wash the tile and gave it a quick sanding and proceed to paint the primer. Let it dry for 20 hours and repaint a second coat of primer - as it said on the can. 40 hours later i have beautiful yellow tile. 20 hours after that, i have rosy tile.
After painting i go on-line and read: You must use oil paint and be sure to sand the hell out of the tile with a heavy duty electric sander. Well that would explain why my first scrape in the paint came just moments after i was finished painting. My little finger nail accidentally and slightly whisked up against the tile as i was carefully painting around the bathtub faucet. A slight but very disappointing scratch. I dabbed it with a touch up brush and continued to cry. Finally a week goes by - as suggested on the can. Time for curing and hardening of the paint. I waited so that i could squirt a nice edge of sillycone around the tub at the edge of the tile. I've worked with this stuff before and it's sooooooo messy. But a strip of masking tape on the tub and on the tile makes for a really nice edge of silicone. I smear it all on and just before drying i pull off the tape and with the tape came the paint. There just aren't enough bad four letter words for a situation like this so i had to use them over and over again - several times.
Before:
After:
After touching up, i am finally ready to lay the new tile on the floor. I am sweating and soooooo nervous that i am accidentally going to hit my fresh new paint job with the sharp edge of a cut tile or the edge of the tile knife. The tile gods must have taken pity on me because the 19 tiles that i laid took several days and so far, not a single scratch in the paint.
The only problem that we have now is that we are scared to death to use the bathroom. "Don't fart" Jens says to me, "The paint might peal."
So, Yes - you can paint tile, and, No, it wont stick.
We are getting ready to sell the house - again - and i decided to spiff up the bathroom. When we tiled the basement a few years ago, we had so much tile left over that we tiled the entry-way to catch all the crud. And still there was so much tile left over that i decided one day i would do the bathroom floor too. That one day was now. When our house was for sale last summer on the internet, i kept thinking that the photo of the bathroom surely must have scared some potential buyers away. It's a room that screams for a re-do from an earlier 1960's re-don't.
My friend, Dan up the street, had his tile painted and some others that i know had their tile painted and it looks pretty darn good. Dan said the paint was just slightly pealing around the water pipes. So i took a look but the pealing is so slight it's not even worth mentioning. I decided that if the paint can hold up to every day use, than i can easily paint my tile too for a fresher looker on the internet and hopefully attract a buyer.
So first i needed to buy the right color paint. I went to the paint shop and picked out the perfect color to match my tile, "Earth 112" and then went one shade lighter to "Earth 110" as a small color chip is ALWAYS surprisingly darker than what you'd expect it to be. The color was a beautiful yellow but not at all what i wanted. How could i have been so far off!? I am a color correcter by trade so i was taken by surprise to see how wrong i was. I went back to the paint shop to take a look again at the color chart and it IS the right color - on the chart but sooooooo wrong when painted on the tile. I was telling the paint man my situation and he said that it didn't really matter which color i chose because they are all ugly. Great help he was. So i tried to second guess the color chart and went with another "close" choice. But i was afraid that it may end up being too rosy. This time the color matched perfectly - to the color chart - rosy, And that was not what i wanted either. I needed something in the brownish, orangish tone.
But rosy is what i ended up with because this could go on forever. I realized afterwards that the color carousel used for mixing colors was extremely old in an old paint shop, owned and operated by an old guy who could care less and thought every color was ugly. It's the color carousel that needed cleaning.
Anyway.... the color is very light and pale so it will work fine for selling purposes. I went into the shop to buy oil paint. The shop keeper said that oil was not necessary and that i could just use "this". He's the expert and what do i know? So as i am about to pay for the paint ,another shop assistant said to me - "Hey! don't forget the primer! You need primer or the paint wont stick!" Thank god he was listening to my conversation with the shop owner. So i come home and wash the tile and gave it a quick sanding and proceed to paint the primer. Let it dry for 20 hours and repaint a second coat of primer - as it said on the can. 40 hours later i have beautiful yellow tile. 20 hours after that, i have rosy tile.
After painting i go on-line and read: You must use oil paint and be sure to sand the hell out of the tile with a heavy duty electric sander. Well that would explain why my first scrape in the paint came just moments after i was finished painting. My little finger nail accidentally and slightly whisked up against the tile as i was carefully painting around the bathtub faucet. A slight but very disappointing scratch. I dabbed it with a touch up brush and continued to cry. Finally a week goes by - as suggested on the can. Time for curing and hardening of the paint. I waited so that i could squirt a nice edge of sillycone around the tub at the edge of the tile. I've worked with this stuff before and it's sooooooo messy. But a strip of masking tape on the tub and on the tile makes for a really nice edge of silicone. I smear it all on and just before drying i pull off the tape and with the tape came the paint. There just aren't enough bad four letter words for a situation like this so i had to use them over and over again - several times.
Before:
After:
After touching up, i am finally ready to lay the new tile on the floor. I am sweating and soooooo nervous that i am accidentally going to hit my fresh new paint job with the sharp edge of a cut tile or the edge of the tile knife. The tile gods must have taken pity on me because the 19 tiles that i laid took several days and so far, not a single scratch in the paint.
The only problem that we have now is that we are scared to death to use the bathroom. "Don't fart" Jens says to me, "The paint might peal."
So, Yes - you can paint tile, and, No, it wont stick.
