If you're just tuning it - welcome to my bathroom. I am currently trying to update it on a major budget. Eventually we will probably do a full gut and remodel - but this is what we are doing for now. If you want to catch up:
Okay so I have a very basic shower door frame. It's metal. A brushed nickel type finish, but since I'm going to be painting my shower tile - I thought it would be a good idea to paint it black and really modernize it!
The first thing I did was clean the shower door. This took a long time - I really wanted to make sure it was clean so the paint would stick. I don't think paint sticks very well to soap scum. I used vinegar and dish soap and scrubbed it really good. I ended up using some CLR for the really tough soap scum and rust.
Next was taping everything off. This took a long time - but you really want to make sure your glass is taped off well. I used paper bags to cover my glass doors. I removed the handles so I could paint them separately. I used plastic sheeting for the floor and covered the walls with more plastic tarp. I wish I would have used paper on the floor - the plastic got sticky when you're walking on it (even with socks on!) and so it shifted and I was constantly trying to make sure it was still covering the floor.
I basically created a little cave so I wouldn't get spray dust everywhere else in my bathroom. It worked pretty well. I did get some mild overspray on the walls right next to the shower - but I'll just touch that up. There was also some fine dust on all the surfaces in the bathroom that I had to clean - so if you're really worried just cover everything. Even if you cover everything, you'll probably still end up cleaning anyways.
I also covered the inside of the shower walls with tarp!
Okay. So here's where things went wrong. I went in to do my primer coat - and I noticed some areas the primer wasn't sticking very well. I decided to just go ahead and coat it with the black - but the paint was also not sticking to those areas. There were little fish eye dots everywhere!
I didn't get a super great pic of this - but trust me it was bad.
My idea to fix this was to sand down those spots - and then prime and spray paint on them to help blend it all together. I was hoping this would make it so those spots would disappear.
You can see above where I put primer over the spotted areas.
After fixing those spots - it was time to spray black again. So I did that - and then I ran into an even bigger issue.
The paint started to bubble. It was really bad, and it was everywhere I touched up areas. I tried a couple more spots and the same thing happened. I didn't know how to fix it other than sanding it again. So I did, and then I did another test spot and the SAME THING HAPPENED. IT was so frustrating, but I figured out the reason it was happening. I read the back of the spray paint can, and you need to recoat within 1 hour, or wait a full 48 hours. If you don't wait, bubbling on the first layer can happen. Which clearly that's what happened to me.
So to fix this - I could wait 2 days or I could do something else. I decided to do something else. I still had my sister's heat gun from when I did my epoxy counters - and so I used that and scraped all of the paint off of the shower frame. Then I was able to redo it without any bubbling.
This time - I opted for a binding primer as well. To really make sure my paint would stick and I wouldn't end up with any fish eyes.
Finally - a nice even coat of paint on my metal shower door frame!
Here is what they like like after I installed the handles again. They look like brand new doors!! I'm getting excited to paint the shower tile. That's up next. So stay tuned!
Here's what I would do differently next time - and what you should do to avoid my mistakes!
- I would sand the shower doors with a 220 grit sandpaper - to really make sure that everything is off of the door frame and the paint will adhere
- Definitely use a bonding primer - here's the one I used the second time around
- Use a flat black paint made for metal - and read the directions on the back of the can and stick to them
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Did you have to do any additional prep work if you had any cracks in your tile? And did you leave the caulk around the shower door or remove and re caulk after you painted?
Have you had issues with it peeling early?