UPDATE: You can see Part 2 of this project – HERE!
This, my friends is our bathtub. We had full plans to get rid of this jet tub born in the 80s as soon as we moved in, but then surprisingly enjoyed using it a lot more than we thought we would! So now we want to keep it, but something about the way this looks has got to change! I got to thinking, the tile is in good shape, could I just paint the tile?? Well, yes, in fact you can paint tile! Let me show you how to paint tile to update it without removing it!
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Last week I showed you how I did a bathroom cabinet makeover using paint, and the tub surround got the same treatment. It was a quick painting project that really made the tub look so much better already. I used Gravel Road for the tub surround, and sealed it with Gator Hide to repel water.
But today, we are painting ceramic tile with chalk paint. Yep, you heard that right. Ceramic tile paint! The first question we all have is, how in the world do you get paint to stick to shiny ceramic tile??? It’s all about that primer! I’m trying out a new (to me) product called Slick Stick. It makes paint stick to slick things (get it?!).
Here’s the full video tutorial on how I did it…
How to Paint Tile.
First things first, I cleaned the tile using White Lightning. Just spray it down and wipe it dry with paper towels. These tiles were clean to start with, so there wasn’t a whole lot of cleaning to be done.
Then grab your Slick Stick and start applying it. I used a Dixie Belle brush to get it on, it’s a little time consuming just to get it in all the grout lines and smooth it out over each tile. Once it was dry (a couple hours will do), I gave it a second coat of primer in the same manner. It’s a bit smelly so work in a well ventilated area. Remember the primer is the real to how to paint tile!
The directions say to let the primer dry overnight, so that’s just what I did. Just let it sit and come back tomorrow. Once dry it makes an incredibly flat finish – a perfect surface for the paint to stick to. Two coats of the primer did cover pretty well, the tiles with the raised pattern did still show through a bit under the primer, but we will take care of that before we are finished…
For my base coat of paint I chose Midnight Sky. It’s a dark, almost but not quite black. Perfect for my vision of cement patterned tile.
Just keep painting. I did paint 2 coats of the Midnight Sky, to completely cover the white primer. And just a note, a 16oz jar of Midnight Sky covered the tub surround twice with extra to spare (so you really don’t need a ton of paint!).
The paint dries quickly, so by the time you finished the first coat, it was almost time to start the second. Then I let it all dry.
Here’s where I was kind of second guessing my decision if I’m totally honest – black tile?! ugh. That was not what I was going for. But I kept on going, and knew this was about to go to the next level of tile painting.
Stay tuned next week, because we use a stencil to make this tile ah-mazing!! I broke this up in two parts because stenciling and sealing the tile has it’s own tips and tricks and deserves a whole post. But I at least gave you a sneak peek…
Would you ever paint tile in your bathroom?? I show you how to stencil and seal this painted tile in THIS POST!
Until then,
Jenni
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