It's been taking me a while to finish our bathroom. Maybe because it exhausted me last summer to get the tub, plumbing, wiring, sub floor, flooring, sink, toilet, cabinets and walls in.
The tub itself was a nightmare. Even though I had the guys put it in place, I just couldn't get the drain assembly right and had to redo it about 4 times. Fortunately, the bathroom is over open ground under the house. Unfortunately, until I had the walls sealed, lots of creepy crawlies got into the house from underneath.
If you want to do a bathroom yourself, I'll let you know that it ended up costing us about $1000 for a teeny bathroom, and we got the tub clearance priced, and the sink and cabinets used (though almost new from a new house bath friends remodeled). We opted for beadboard walls instead of tile. Holy cow baths are expensive to gut and rebuild. We gutted everything but some of the wall and the base pipes and wiring.
At the end of the summer I only had to put up the trim on the tub surround and find some kind of sealer for the walls, and install the new light fixture, but by then I was fried. That meant we could only bathe and no showers until I finished. But it was so nice to take a bath in a tub that wasn't pink, stained with rust and peeling epoxy paint from a previous attempt of salvage.
Finally, this spring I got tired of bathing every day. I knew that I would want to shower off the sweat and lake water in the summer, so I grabbed the pile of trim and started finishing the tub surround. With trim finished, all I had left to do was caulk and seal the walls. I went through 3 types of caulk before I found the right one. Having to rip out and clean off the old, before I got one to actually stick to the walls AND tub. Pure white silicone with microban.
Walls sealed I had to find something to seal the walls with, that would be as durable as tile and not so expensive. I had previously painted walls white and sealed in spar (marine) varnish. Worked great. I looked on the internet for solutions and armed myself with a list of options as I headed out to the local hardware store.
Marine paint, no, I wanted white walls and they didn't have white. Paint with marine sealer would work, but at $20 a gallon for paint and $40 a gallon for sealer, and that would be more work, no. Most of my paint options were so pricey, even the epoxy tub paint and basement waterproofing paint. Then I found it, the last thing on my list that was recommended. A small can of appliance epoxy paint in white. Actually white was the only color they carried. It was just under $16 a can and the square foot coverage was more than double what I needed with 2 coats. I could come over and paint your shower walls too.
My pictures are not great. The bathroom is so tiny, I can't really back up to get a good shot of the whole thing, but I wanted you to see the walls. They have been finished for about 2 months now and show absolutely no signs of staining or wear or peeling. The surface is shiny and hard like tile and I will never use anything else to paint shower walls with again.
I still have a tiny bit of floor trim to do, but I finally installed that matching light fixture too, although I haven't bought the right bulbs for it yet.
(added note after post: If you use the epoxy appliance paint, let paint dry before second coat. I tried it in the recommended quick second coat time and it was a mess. I stopped and finished the second coat the next day with great results)
