Refinishing Bathroom Tile Floor

[Evan Ventura]

Hey everyone, Has anybody ever refinished (painted) a tile bathroom floor? I will be having a local company reglaze the bath tub/shower walls who also offer a tile painting service. They claim it is durable and water resistant, I believe he referred to it as Multispec Top Coat. Can anybody attest to this for use in a medium-grade rental? For my bathroom he wants $650 for the tub and $485 for the tile. Sounds like a nice savings over replacing the existing floor but only if it's not going to look awful in a year or two. Thanks!

[Christopher J Lemmon]

I have done a few bathroom floors myself in my own rentals. My opinion. Tear it out and put in ceramic tile. It's very durable and looks great. HD, Lowes, or Menards all have stylist affordable options. It's usually a little more than a tenant expects in a rental, which gives you a small competitive edge when you show it. It makes your bathroom nicer than others. Plus it's honestly not that hard to do.
There are lots of videos on YouTube explaining how to do, and in the long run good tile could last 20 years. If the style does. It look dated too quickly. The process is pretty simple. It is essentially, tear out what you have to the subfloor, make sure the subfloor is strong, and level, repair the subfloor if needed, lay backboard over the subfloor, cut it to fit, and screw it down, then mix thin set and lay tile over thin set with spacers. There are a lot of YouTube videos explaining and demonstrating how to do it. The average HD flooring guy can usually walk you through what you need to do. You could probably do it all yourself for less than the $400 the flooring guy wants to charge you to "paint your tile." I would not count on that looking good after one tenant. Think about it this way, you are putting money into better materials instead of the flooring guys labor, that's most of his cost. More than likely if you pain the tile, you will be back in 6-12 months weighing whether to tear it all back out again. When ever the tenant moves out instead of just cleaning and resenting you will be back weighing whether to tear it out. If you lay ceramic yourself you will have a long lasting product that is 10 times better than your current floor. It saves time. You just take the fastest path to the most logical upgrade, rather than wasting time on something you will probably just want to change again soon. That's my take.

Tubs on the other hand can be resurfaced and it's cheaper to resurface a tub than to remove and install a new one. Resurfaced ones typically look at good as a new one in my opinion.