Rust-o-leum Tub & Tile refinishing kit

This is one of those products that always befuddles me when I read the reviews. The reviews average very positive, and there are countless glowing 5 star reviews. But, there’s also a definite cluster of folks (with 1 star reviews) who have had serious problems using this, problems that are all similar to what I faced. So I always wonder, did we get a bad batch of product? (Support told me this wasn’t the case.) Do we have a unique type of tub composition that makes this hard? Do we have bathrooms that are unusually dry or humid? Or are we just more demanding people with higher expectations and standards that near perfection? The world may never know.

In any case, I originally wrote this to communicate with product support the problems I was having. I thought this would be a weekend project, when in fact, my tub was out of commission for 2 months as I kept iterating on it (to be clear it’s not like I was working on it daily, but still, that’s a long time).

I leave this post here as a very detailed reminder of what NOT to do (in case this product flakes off in a few months, as I’m terrified it may do, per the other 1 star reviews that have shared the challenges I have already faced) if I were to try to repair it in the future.

This post is divided into 3 sections:

1. An overview of the results I got and where my expectations weren’t met
2. The TL:DR; of lessons learnt the very hard way
3. And for those who are truly interested (including future me), a detailed analysis of each phase of the project

Results (to be updated pending use…)

Here’s the before taken on February 27, 2022.

(If you’re curious how the hell that happened… I put some very heavily greasy grill grates in a vinegar solution in the tub. Worked well for the grill grates, but the tub took on a yellow-ish tinge. In trying to remove the yellow-ish tinge, I used TSP and scrubbed severely enough that I effectively stripped the bottom of the tub entirely, allowing every kind of soap scum [pretty sure the water in this apartment is not softened] to stick.)

Here’s the after, finished on April 30, 2022.

NOTE: I didn’t also refinish the tile. That I just cleaned!

That looks great from afar, but frankly, based on the results alone (and not even my crazy challenges), I wouldn’t recommend this project as a DIY.

NOTE I’m saying this project, not necessarily this product. I have not tried another brand of tub refinishing product. But frankly I use enough Rust-o-leum products to think that it’s probably not a product flaw; I can’t imagine the other products on the market being hugely different in a way that could’ve avoided my crazy challenges.

There are 2 main reasons I wouldn’t do this again (even if I were to have done it correctly per all of the lessons learned below!)

ONE. It’s not as self-leveling as I expected.

This is an epoxy acrylic formula paint that self-levels. When I read that, I thought back on my experience using an epoxy paint for countertops (Leggari Products’ White Pigmented Epoxy countertop kit), where the paint was so self-leveling it literally beaded up (almost like rain on a waterproof jacket). This characteristic made total sense to me because otherwise, it would be impossible to not have obvious runoff marks on the very vertical walls of a tub. My expectations going in (and unfortunately not having read any reviews or watching any YouTube videos) were that it would be similar to that countertop — a gleaming, solid, single, polished surface.

Yeah… the paint doesn’t self-level that much. Starting in Phase 3/4, I was rolling on the thinnest amounts of paint possible, and still I was seeing runoff marks.

PHOTO: you can see runoff marks near the center of this photo.

In fact, even the marks left by the roller didn’t level out.

PHOTO: surface almost took on a texture from the roller

Is this nit-picking? Yes. Few people probably look that closely at a tub in the dim bathroom light. But that’s just where my expectations were at. And again, that’s not even considering how crazy this project ended up being. I honestly would say, spend the hundred dollars or so to either hire a pro, or just re-glaze the tub entirely (rather than just refinishing it).

TWO. It flakes or or chips off rather easily.

I will caveat that this could be due to me not having sanded it appropriately to ensure proper adhesion, which is one of my lessons on which grit sandpaper to use (basically, ignore their instructions).

But without knowing this, I will say that the chipping dragged this project out horrendously. Even at the VERY end, when I was cleaning — running a brush along the edges caused chipping… too much to cover with caulk. Frankly now I’m just waiting until I move and then I may attempt to re-finish it again then. (Until which time, I’ll be terrified to clean with anything other than a sponge.)

PHOTO: Chipping from cleaning the edges

Lessons learned the hard way

If I had to redo this whole thing from scratch, these are the things I’d do to get the best possible outcome.

Do not use a brush of any type (no bristle, no foam)

I tried a bristle brush first, and the self-leveling issues described above were just compounded to the N-th degree. A foam brush kind of worked, but not as well as rollers in terms of minimizing visible strokes.

Rollers applied paint the smoothest, but presented other issues (read on). I’d like to see the effect of a sprayer, honestly, but I can’t imagine doing this again myself.

Do not mix all the paint at once

To avoid all the issues I had throughout this post, I learned that rolling super thin coats are the way to go, and you’ll need like… at least 3 phases of 2 coats each. Between each coat within a phase, wait no more than 1 hour; and between each phase, you need to wait at least 24 hours.

The product instructions on the box (which, compared with Rust-o-leum’s own tutorial videos, are already severely lacking) just say to mix it all and then you have 6 hours to work with it. Yeah, that’s how I basically wasted the entire first box I bought.

Remember the ratio is 1 part A to 4 parts B ratio. Fortunately one box gives you more than enough product for all the coats and phases!

Do not wait more than 1 hour to reuse mixed paint between coats

Any paint you mixed that’s over 1 hour old is so tacky when it is applied that it really created problems for me. But you might be thinking ok… just to do a first fresh coat, you may need more than 1 hour.

Yup… follow the logical extension. I’m basically saying it’s ideal to only mix enough paint for 1 coat at a time. So with my math above of 3 phases of 2 coats, that means you need to mix paint 6 separate times.

Only in my Phase 3/4 when I was fixing smaller areas, did I reuse paint for 2 coats, because it would take me no more than 15 minutes to apply a first coat.

Do not use plastic beverage cups to mix the paint

I read in an online review that someone used a red Solo cup and it melted through! The same thing happened to me with one of those “fancier” clear Chinet cups (they’re both made of the same thing… I just want to be clear that I’ve aged out of red Solo cups, my one win in this post… lol). That said I used 4 Chinet cups to mix before one finally melted, and only because there was still quite a bit of paint inside, so my takeaway is that a thin layer is fine, but anything else, and you risk it eating through (which isn’t immediate by the way, since I left it there for several hours and only noticed it ate through overnight).

That said, I also used plastic yogurt containers and did not have a problem. Be careful and line your workspace well!

Use a 4 inch roller, no wider!

This is just to account for the interior concave edges of the tub. I thought I could maneuver well with a standard width roller and then plug in the gaps with a foam brush, but, as I leaned that a foam brush is untenable, I switched to using only a roller and just being careful to smooth out the edges.

Ideally change rollers for every coat

Seriously, continuing from above, this paint just becomes so troublesome after the first coat (even though their support team said one roller for 2 coats should be fine)! For the first coat, I experimented with different types of rollers, foam vs synthetic fiber with various nap lengths (they recommend a 1/4" nap, specialty kitchen & bath roller, but 3 hardware stores near me didn’t carry specialty kitchen & bath and it ended up being really hard to find 1/4" nap in a 4 inch!).

I can say that the first coat went on fine. The second coat however… the paint tackiness causes real problems. Foam rollers will literally start disintegrating, with chunks falling off as you roll. With fiber rollers, this is where nap matters. The longer the nap, the more the fibers start to come undone.

Even with the 1/4" nap roller that I used in Phase 4, i.e., after I learned all these lessons and was doing coats exactly 1 hour apart, you can see in this image a strand of fiber has just come off (and yes, as they’d recommended I did use painter’s tape to pull off loose fibers before starting):

This is where the project can get unexpectedly expensive… if I were to start over, following my own advice, I’d probably do 4 phases, 2 coats each, that’s at least 8 rollers, assuming no other problems!

Toward the end in Phase 3/4, I was no longer willing to change rollers so constantly. I did keep more of a careful eye on fibers coming loose, but I also do just accept that there are some fibers (as seen in first picture in Phase 1). Oh well… that’s just part of the texture now!

NOTE: I did NOT try cleaning the rollers between coats. They said to use either isopropyl alcohol or lacquer thinner. Lacquer thinner is very toxic and off-gases heavily so I try to not use it, especially because I couldn’t stay out of the house for so long. Isopropyl alcohol I tried 90% and it didn’t do anything. I called them and they said, “oh, it should be 100%”… well gee thanks. As this happened in Phase 3, I just said whatever to cleaning.

In Phase 3 I also tried to wrap up the roller between coats to keep it moist, but I honestly don’t think this did anything at all. For reference, this is the roller I ultimately settled on using (with all my mistakes I ended up like buying 4 of these)

If you don’t have a clean roller for the 2nd coat, then don’t roll back and forth too much

Because the excessive motion causes more fibers to fall off. Just trust that you’ll be doing thin coats repeatedly for awhile!

On the naked tub, use ~100 grit sandpaper

The box instructions said 400 grit, but with all of my problems with flaking off, the support people said to try a lower grit… albeit a little too late, but we’ll see what the results are over time.

Sanding between coats or phases? Don’t have a lesson here

The instructions do not mention this, but I was so paranoid about adhesion given all the problems that I had that I always sanded between coats/phases, though gradually, to avoid creating flakes and problems (at this point, I’m just saving them for future me), I moved up to 400 grit.

Ok still reading? Here’s a detailed overview of what I did.

Phase 0

This was me thinking the project would take a weekend and be super straightforward, because again the box instructions are woefully lacking. I followed the instructions very well in terms of cleaning and sanding, albeit I used 400 grit sandpaper, and one of the lessons learned is that I just don’t think this was enough grit.

I initially used a synthetic bristle brush for the first coat, and didn’t make it too thin, which, by the time it had tried and I was ready to apply the second coat, I realized was a horrible mistake, per all the lessons learned above. The brush had left very very visible marks.

I call this Phase 0 because I actually stopped (having only brushed on paint in the interior), waited 24 hours, then rigorously sanded down the marks to a smooth surface and basically started over.

Phase 1

Ok, now I’m thinking, no big deal, made the obvious mistake, but now it’ll be fine. Since I started with a bristle brush, in this phase, I did experimentation with various rollers, and actually to be totally truthful, Phase 1 consists of a number of stop-and-gos where I realized some rollers were disintegrating into the paint, and I had to wait 24 hours, sand and restart. But that’s just too much to read.

At some point, I finished a good first layer throughout with the right roller, then waited 1.5–2 hours, then used the same roller that had not been cleaned to add on paint coat 2. With normal paint, I expected this to be OK.

With this paint, I noticed that when rolling on layer 2, there was a real “tackiness” as the paint went on. I had to actually stop because I realized that chunks of the roller — not just small hairs, but actual mm sized chunks of fiber — started falling off! (Yes, I used the recommended 1/4" short nap roller, and I had used painter’s tape to try to pull off fibers. None of this happened with 1st layer.) I got nervous and basically immediately stopped. When the paint dried, this is what it looked like.

PHOTO: You can see clearly that little hairs from the roller got lodged in the paint. This doesn’t look like much, but trust me, it’s a very small part of the tub exterior. It was really visibly noticeable.

PHOTO: Where there was high levels of “tackiness” the paint went on extremely splotchy, as you can see below. What I unfortunately don’t have a picture of, is that in some spots, adding on layer 2 caused layer 1 to peel up and off!

At this point, I’m thinking, OK… maybe part of this was my mistake. For example, in the second case, maybe layer 1 peeled off because the tub surface wasn’t appropriately sanded. But for the first case issue of the fibers of the roller being pulled out, I have no idea what happened there. I guess the paint gets tackier over time, of course, but I had no idea it got that bad!

I called customer service, they advised me to wait until the paint cures fully after 3 days, then sand down the problem areas and just add layer(s) until covered.

This is where the disaster began.

Phase 2

Remember the last photo of the splotchiness and how I mentioned in some spots layer 1 started peeling? Yeah ok so after I sanded that all away, this was the result.

PHOTO: Un-freaking-believable

What happened is that the more I sanded, the more the layers just started chipping and flaking off! Again, I’m thinking, ok maybe this is my fault. I didn’t sufficiently sand the surface of the tub, that’s why the paint didn’t stick. So my solution was to go overboard. The above picture is the result of me using 80 grit sandpaper to be SUPER sure that I got all the parts that were not well-adhered (better now than when I start using it), and then with 180 grit, and then finally with 320 grit on the edges.

Frankly, a challenge was when to stop sanding, even with the 320 grit, it seemed that bits of the edges were constantly coming off. Still I was confident going forward things would be different. The surface was now as scratched as it could be for maximal adherence, and I planned on rolling the thinnest possible layers. With my experience so far, I figured I’d do layer 1–2, wait 24 hours, sand lightly, then do layer 3–4.

PHOTO: Here’s what it looked like after layer 1–2. As you can see, because I was super careful about doing light layers, the natural tub is still very much visible.

After 24 hours, I got ready to sand and do you know what? I realized the same thing was happening. Little clumps had formed at the edges, that sanded away and chipped off into bigger and bigger flakes until, well… this was the result.

PHOTO: the same view above, after sanding, 320 grit, on only the patches on the upper left side.

Talk about 3 steps forward, 2 steps backward! Almost the same surface area flaked off as I was trying to repaint!

PHOTO: A closer view of the above. The parts that are “cloudy” represent the original patches I was trying to cover. And the grayer parts are the new patches resulting from this phase of sanding.

At this point, I am super concerned that I’m going to be stuck in this repeat loop forever. What I imagine is happening, is that this paint is not very sand-able such that , so wherever the paint chips, the demarcation line just doesn’t sand to a natural gradient, there’s always a “cliff”. That cliff is where the next layer of paint tends to accumulate, despite how thin of a layer I was trying to paint on. In fact, I have a series of photos to show this, documenting what happened from start to finish and I tried to sand one of the patched areas for another set of coats. Again I’m using 320 grit, but in another area, I tested with 600 grit, same thing happened.

PHOTO: Before any sanding. This was a patch that, recall, I had applied 2 very thin layers of paint to, waited 24 hours, and was about to sand again prior to 2 more thin layers. You can see how at the bottom edge, there’s 3 noticeable imperfections, 2 on either side with some paint accumulation, and a “bubbled” area in the middle.

PHOTO: The same photo above after a little bit of sanding. Let’s call this A

PHOTO: …after more sanding, let’s call this B.

PHOTO: …and more sanding, let’s call this C.

Yeah so… now you can see how I wind up with almost as much “naked” tub as the areas I was trying to patch from Phase 1!

Maybe I over-sanded, was there a step A-B-C above where I could have stopped? But the reason I kept sanding is because at no point did the edges stop easily flaking off. That is… I was concerned that adding on more paint would easily cause more peeling as I had experienced in Phase 1.

PHOTO: A look downward at the one of the areas I was sanding, and you can see very clearly how flakey the paint is!

My logic is, before I paint again, I need to get to a place where as I move the sandpaper across, things aren’t super easily flaking off again, otherwise the next layers of paint are likely to just peel right off.

But at this point, clearly, that sanding takes off a huge chunk of paint and I essentially have to start from scratch. So… how do I break this loop? What am I missing? Do I just have a bad batch of paint?

At this point I didn’t want to continue this cycle of 3 steps forward and 2 steps back, so I sent this post over to the support team and waited for a response.

Phase 3

Like the other times I had called support, they weren’t really able to provide more insight other than reminding me to check that I’d cleaned and sanded very thoroughly to ensure adhesion. They checked the product barcodes and determined that I didn’t have a too-old or bad batch of paint. But on the bright side, they did offer to send me a check to cover the product, even though I’d long lost the receipt, so that was a plus and gave me motivation to start again.

At this point there was basically nothing new I could try. I just prayed things would work. So I sanded more lightly the 320 grit paper until things largely weren’t flaking off anymore.

PHOTO: right before first coat of this phase.

Then once again, I rolled on the thinnest layer of paint.

PHOTO: right after first coat in this phase.

This time, toward the end of the hour wait between coats, I did a thorough inspection of the edges, and I did find some spots that were at risk.

PHOTO: If you notice at the top edges, there are some spots that do look ready to peel.

Honestly I’ve come to the conclusion that this product just… eats away at itself or something?? So maybe I just needed to learn to deal with it. In this case, I took a tiny pair of tweezers and peeled some of the edges before putting on layer 2.

PHOTO: after 2nd coat of this phase. The patches still look very visible, and it still looks like I will need another 2 layers, after a full 24 hour cure period.

Phase 4

I am THRILLED that at the end of Phase 3, after the full cure, I didn’t have any more obvious blotches or edges that flaked off. At this point I am kind of over this to be honest. I just want it to be done because as per the other reviewers that had a bad experience, I’m worried the flaking will happen in a few months’ time despite my diligence anyway! So before I put on the next phase of 2 thin layers, I did sand, but more lightly and with 400 grit. Then I prayed and started again.

PHOTO: after the first coat in this phase. (Yes I stopped caring to the point where I started just leaving supplies in the tub.)

I charged on ahead with phase 2, not examining the edges too closely. Frankly I think I was worried that more edges unraveling would also affect my sanity.

PHOTO: after the 2nd coat in this phase. Amazingly, the splotches are still not well covered.

This implies to me that had I adopted the thin coat strategy in the first place, I may have needed 4 phases of 2 coats each.

Phase 5

As you saw in the last photo, some of the patches were still visible. Moreover, because I mentioned that the edges didn’t sand to a gradient (or that whenever I tried the edges would just flake off), since I used a roller to add on the paint over the patches, the edges were pretty clearly visible.

PHOTO: edge of patchy area still visible, and from standing looking down, you can tell this patch is not the same shade of white.

That’s why for this final phase, I decided to use a foam brush to try to just add a thin layer to the area inside the edged portions to try to cover it up. To avoid brush marks I did a combo of brushing and dabbing.

After 1 coat, the primary goal was achieved, overall the surface looked a solid color of white. However, the secondary goal, to try to mask the edges, didn’t really work, and in fact, some the foam brush appears to have shed a bit.

PHOTO: same patch as above, edges are still visible, and there are tiny tiny black spots from the brush, but I do promise that from a distance this looks more solid white than it did in first picture.

At this point, however, I decided to call it. I didn’t want to paint on who-knows-how-many more coats to try to make the edges disappear, especially because recall at the start of Phase 3 there were so many patches with edges! Who knows what issues that might cause. Besides, I’m just nervous that per the other reviews this will flake in a few months and I’ll have to do more work anyway!

Fingers crossed.

Yeah not done yet.

Phase 6

When I started cleaning up and removing the blue tape that edged the tub, two things happened.

First, a piece of blue tape had fallen off at some point and was on the side of the tub for several days. I didn’t think much of it and didn’t bother to remove earlier. When I finally did… yup you guessed it.

PHOTO: chunk of paint taken off by blue tape.

This patch was the size of a thumbnail so rather than do the whole process again, I actually mixed droplets of parts A/B with wooden chopsticks, stirred, and literally dabbed on with the chopsticks! Very similarly to mixing epoxy glue, I guesstimated the proportions based on my experience by now of how it should feel and hoped for the best.

Here’s the outcome, since I’m very zoomed in, it’s another chance for you to see how splotchy and uneven the self-leveling result was.

At this point, I was finally ready to remove the blue tape edging the tub, but I was so paranoid now because of what just happened that I didn’t want to peel it, and risk taking off patches of paint from the edges because the adhesion between the paint that crossed from tub to tape was stronger than that between paint and actual tub.

So, I decided to use an exacto knife and carefully break the paint bond at the edge of the blue tape. For 90% of the tub, it was fine. Then this happened.

PHOTO: Exacto knife breaks through the hard paint, causing it to shatter at the edges inward.

And of course, as I go to wipe it away and clear it, MORE patches start to fall off.

PHOTO: Same edge area as above after brushing and clearing

On the bright side, I realized this was finally a chance to put all the lessons that I’d learned together! So here’s how I approached this bit:

1. I decided to use a clean foam brush for each coat and anticipated 4 coats across 2 phases
2. I sanded across the entire area with 400 grit until no more paint was flaking off. Then, on ONLY the naked spots, I sanded with 80 grit just to extra scratch it up to help drive adhesion (I’m pretty sure using 80 grit throughout would have caused endless flaking)

This actually did work well. Here’s what it looked like after the above process. If you look REALLY closely, you’ll see some old color, so perhaps another coat or two would have been best, but at this point, I was ready to call it, and wait to roll anything else into future fixes.

PHOTO: Edge above after 2 phases & 4 coats, if you look at the right side, you can faintly see some of the old tub showing through.

Cleanup???

Phase 7

I was going to clean and caulk the edges. In the process of cleaning, I actually caused more flaking. Oh. My…..

PHOTO: Edges flake & chip after a light brush, note this is a different spot than the spot above, where, hopefully because I followed the lessons learned including using a lower grit sandpaper, the paint will be more adhered.

And I dropped a screwdriver, which created another nick the size of a penpoint.

At this point I’m just accepting it as is. Spending more time isn’t worth it anymore because clearly, due to all the mistakes I made, there will be problems in the future. I will probably wait until I move, or another decade has passed, and then attempt to do more patching.

I do plan on updating this post with how the paint holds up with use. Stay tuned!