Monthly Mini Makeover – Master Bath (Part 2) Painting the Tile

Hi Friends! I’m so excited to share my largest DIY with you, painting my master bathroom. And, I don’t just mean painting the walls, that’s child’s play. I painted the walls, cabinets, AND tile. I didn’t want to go through the whole ordeal of replacing everything in my bathroom, because my townhome is only 4 years old so everything is in great shape. It’s just a little too dark for my taste so I wanted to brighten up the room.

This blog post is an extension to my Monthly Mini Makeover series where I make ‘little’ updates to my home every month and show you just how much little changes can do. This is also the second part of my master bath makeover, make sure to read the first part here.

My original thought was that I had to replace the tile all together and lay new tile. Then, thanks to the magic of Pinterest, I found out that I could simply paint the tile and save a boat load of money! I did most of my research for this on YouTube, I was shocked by how many people have painted their tiles. But most of them, if not all, were for their shower tiles. Now, shower tiles will, obviously, get much more wet than tiles on the floor but I decided to use the same process since I’m still working in the bathroom with a lot of humidity and water. Overall the process is fairly simple:

1. Clean Tile
2. Sandpaper Tile
3. Tape Perimeter
4. Paint Tile
5. Seal Tile

When all is said and done, I love the result of my knew floors, but I found this whole process to be a bit of a challenge. There are certain things that I learned along the way that I never would have known unless I had done this before. So keep reading below to learn from my mistakes. 🙂

The first step is to clean the tile. And by clean, I mean CLEAN CLEAN. I mean clean it so well that you could eat off your tile! The cleaning step is the most important because any dirt or water that get trapped between the paint and the tile will cause it to chip or bubble and then it’s harder to trick people into thinking you really changed out your tile. In actuality, I was constantly performing the cleaning step in between every coat of paint.

I had a real issue with dog hair. I have a black lab so she doesn’t shed a lot but man did her hair get everywhere and it was very visible up against white tile. I simply swept her hair up and I wiped down every tile before I painted a coat of paint. But that wasn’t enough. I also made the apparent mistake of letting the air circulate from the bathroom to the bedroom (which I had not cleaned free of dog hair), so between the fan running and the added circulation, there was dog hair everywhere and trapped between the layers of paint. I ended up having to go in with tweezers to get them out. So I would recommend blocking off all airflow into the bathroom and maybe even vacuum in between each coat of paint.

Time to Complete: 1 hour. I actually cleaned twice. I’ve lived in this house for 2 years and I’ve never cleaned the floors of my bathroom (ew I know). So the first clean was just a clean to get the first layer of gunk off. Then the second time was my full clean.

Sandpapering (never thought I’d use that as a verb) was probably the easiest part of this whole process. I just put them on my feet and slid around. But, I didn’t know this at the time but found out later, you should be sandpapering after every coat of paint, just to roughen it up and make sure that everything is off. Just make sure to use a high grade of sandpaper (rough) but don’t use a steal wool pad, those are too much. I used Gator Grip 220 grit sandpaper, from Walmart for about $5 for a pack of 6 (and I needed all 6)

Time to Complete: 15 minutes each time, depending on how big your bathroom is.

I always think taping is the worst and most useless part of painting. I always think, ‘Oh, if I’m carful then I don’t need to tape’. And every time I’m wrong, tape your perimeter it makes everything go so much faster and the crisp clean lines are so satisfying. I used the blue painters tape that everyone recommends and it worked great and didn’t peal off any paint when I went to remove it.

Time to Complete: 30 minutes, depending on how big your bathroom is, and how anal you are about getting a straight line.

FINALLY, for the fun part that will actually make you feel like you accomplished something 🙂 It’s time to paint the tile. For the outer perimeter I used an angled paint brush, you’ll want to get a decent quality brush so the bristles don’t come off and get stuck in the paint. For the middle, I used a roller and always tried to make a ‘V’, that way you can be sure to get every nook and cranny of the tile.

For the actual paint, I used Epoxy – Seal Concrete and Garage Floor paint. I figured that if it’s good enough to hold up in a garage, then it’s good enough for my bathroom.

Time to Dry: 2-3 hours (air on the safe side and do 3, I did 2 because I have no patience and regret it)

Number of Coats: Depends on how dark your original floor colors were, I did 3 coats in the middle and 4 coats on the outside.

I’ll be honest, I originally skipped this step. But, since I didn’t use a high gloss paint (couldn’t find it), the floors were incredibly rough and just didn’t look right. After I applied one coat of sealer I could already tell the difference and, in person, the difference was crazy. For me, this was the step that I never thought I needed, but I’m so glad that I did it.

There are a bunch of sealers out there but I used Minwax Polycrylic in clear semi-gloss ($25 for 1 quart).

Time to Dry: 1 hour

Number of Coats: 2

6 Month Update:

It’s been about 6 months since I painted my floors and there have been no chips!