Anybody ever painted over tile before?

[Tazicket]

We have really ugly brown tile on the floor of the bathroom of our new house. I really don't want to go to the trouble of ripping it up if we can at all avoid it. (We just moved in and we have enough headaches at the moment)

Has anybody painted over tile before? How did it turn out? Was it worth it?

Is it possible to just put new tile on top of the existing tile? (Probably not, but I figured I'd ask)

 

[Cool-Beans]

I know you can tile over old tile on floors, but I don't know about walls. I would think so, but maybe gravity helps with floors and hurts with walls? Dunno.

Our first apartment (a hellhole, to be sure, and a drunk for a landlord) had a bathroom where someone had attempted to paint over tile and painted over spots where tile had fallen off. Of course, the paint slithered off the walls exposing the tile. Duh. DH got some chemical and removed the paint completely, filled in the broken spots with different tile.

DH and friend also removed the cardboard-wall that had been put up on the lower half of the walls, knocked out the parts where moldy wall was hanging on and put up real-wall somehow.

It looked sooooo much better (and cuter) when we left than it did when we got there.

 

[ilovepcot]

A good friend of mine saw a Christopher Lowell show that showed how to paint over existing tile. She transformed her 50's pink tile bathroom into a gorgeous dove gray one. Have *no idea* how this was done but it turned out GREAT! Bet someone here knows how this is done....after all, this is the DIS!!!!

 

[Tazicket]

I know you can tile over old tile on floors, but I don't know about walls. I would think so, but maybe gravity helps with floors and hurts with walls? Dunno.

Our first apartment (a hellhole, to be sure, and a drunk for a landlord) had a bathroom where someone had attempted to paint over tile and painted over spots where tile had fallen off. Of course, the paint slithered off the walls exposing the tile. Duh. DH got some chemical and removed the paint completely, filled in the broken spots with different tile.

DH and friend also removed the cardboard-wall that had been put up on the lower half of the walls, knocked out the parts where moldy wall was hanging on and put up real-wall somehow.

It looked sooooo much better (and cuter) when we left than it did when we got there.

Fortunately, there isn't any tile on the walls and the tile in the bath tub (wait...I guess that counts as a wall, huh?) is a neutral creamy color (I want to paint the walls a yellow-y happy beige color and accent with white). If we paint the ugly floor, it'll probably just be a white. I'm just having visions of the cat sneaking in there and walking through it and tracking white paw prints all over the house.

Your first apartment sounds fabulous! We had a great landlord for our first condo (the one we just moved out of)...we did have a legitimately crazy person living upstairs, though. Oh, the stories I could tell...

A good friend of mine saw a Christopher Lowell show that showed how to paint over existing tile. She transformed her 50's pink tile bathroom into a gorgeous dove gray one. Have *no idea* how this was done but it turned out GREAT! Bet someone here knows how this is done....after all, this is the DIS!!!!

Let me know if you find out how she did it!

 

[denisem]

You're talking ceramic tile, right? I looked into this about 10 years ago for the horrid pink floor tile in my bathroom. I was told it wouldn't hold up well because of the wear and tear of walking on it - whereas wall tile is better suited to being painted.

Then again, that was 10 years ago and maybe there are better products now!

 

[Pop Daddy]

you name it, I painted over it

 

[pixiechick]

Our bathroom has tile- floor to ceiling. First we painted with kilz, or something similar, to make a surface for the paint to "grab" on to, then we painted with a regular latex paint. It looks okay. It's not a long term solution but it has lasted for a couple of years and looks better than it did.

 

[Cool-Beans]

you name it, I painted over it

A beehive.

The Y bridge.

...I kill me.

 

[Tazicket]

Our bathroom has tile- floor to ceiling. First we painted with kilz, or something similar, to make a surface for the paint to "grab" on to, then we painted with a regular latex paint. It looks okay. It's not a long term solution but it has lasted for a couple of years and looks better than it did.

Did you get one of the glossier paint finishes?

 

[Stucas]

go to home depot/lowes. they make a paint specifically for painting over ceramic tiles.

 

[Tazicket]

go to home depot/lowes. they make a paint specifically for painting over ceramic tiles.

Cool! That's really good to know! Of course, you'd think that I would have noticed that on any one of our approximately 4,000,000,000 trips there in the last 2 weeks.



Guess that's what happens when you get your first house and then don't sleep for a week b/c you're trying to fix everything!!

I'll talk to the paint guys there this weekend. I'm just wondering how long we'd have to stay out of the bathroom to let it dry properly (there's only 1 bathroom in the house, and I'm not too fond of leaves!)

 

[Stucas]

No problem I learned about it on one of those home makeover shows on TV. They only had 24 or 48 hours to do it...so I can't imagine you would have to stay out of the bathroom longer than that. I just hope you can hold it for 48 hours ..or if not I hope you have bushes outside

 

[Disney Doll]

Why not just buy a reasonably priced tile and tile over it. You can some at Home Depot that are downright inexpensive and probably fairly "neutral" looking and would probably hold up OK for a few years until, perhaps, you were ready and able to invest more into the bathroom and redo it.

I just have this impression of paint on floor tile as not holding up well and looking lousy really quickly. And I think it's easy to tile over tile.

 

[NotUrsula]

The issue with double-layering tile in a bathroom is that you need to lift the toilet when you do it. You will have to take the toilet out and re-mount it higher so that it is above the new layer of tile (There are extension collars for the waste pipe that make this do-able.)

Otherwise, it's not hard. You just put new tile right over the old stuff. I really wouldn't paint bathroom floor tile, it won't hold up to being scrubbed.

BTW, if you want an inexpensive solution, you might look into sheet rubber. It can be cut to fit around all the fixtures, then caulked at the edges to make it waterproof. It's also non-slip.

 

[bengalbelle]

Why not just buy a reasonably priced tile and tile over it. You can some at Home Depot that are downright inexpensive and probably fairly "neutral" looking and would probably hold up OK for a few years until, perhaps, you were ready and able to invest more into the bathroom and redo it.

I just have this impression of paint on floor tile as not holding up well and looking lousy really quickly. And I think it's easy to tile over tile.

I watch Designed to Sell every night and they always put vinyl tile over existing floors. I think it's about $1 per square foot and some of the vinyl tiles look just like ceramic. They've never raised the toilet on those shows, so maybe you can just cut the tile to go around the toilet?

 

[bengalbelle]

If you do decide to paint over the tiles, you can find instructions here:
http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/ah_real_estate_selling/article/0,,HGTV_3165_5313563,00.html

 

[Pigeon]

My mil tried this and it was a disaster. It started peeling and scuffing in no time and looked horrible.