The bath tub from...you know where.

What's haunting me this Halloween isn't a ghoul or goblin.  It resides in my bathroom, was thought to be terminated, only to resurface this spring & torment me all summer/fall.  It's my lovely pink bath tub.  (Insert sarcasm.)

When we moved into the house in September 2008, we knew that one of the first projects we'd tackle was the main level bathroom.  It was a hot pink & gold, who-knows-with-what stained carpet mess.  In a few long months, we went from creepy & grimy to clean & bright.

When we first remodeled the bathroom, we used Rustoleum's Tub & Tile Refreshing Kit in white. My aunt & uncle had used the same product a few years before & their (formerly blue) bathtub still looks great.  Not so much here.  This past spring the finish really started to chip away.  Once it started, it just kept going, faster & faster.  This is what our tub looked like as of last week:

First of all, it LOOKS horrible.  Second, the paint would chip off & lodge in the drain, causing me to lose my mind trying to pick it all out.  Third, & the reason that I decided to bite the bullet & start this project now...the edges were sharp!  The last thing I wanted was for Grady to get a chuck of paint stuck in one of his cheeks while taking a bath - ouch!

Soooo...I started with a sanding block & scraper thinking that if it was coming off so quickly simply from everyday use, it surely would come right off with some sanding & scraping.  Not the case.

I was able to get a little bit off, but it seriously would have taken until the new year to get it all sanded using that method.  We didn't have any problems with the sides of the tub (both inside & out), so we decided that we'd get the whole bottom stripped, as well as smooth out the spots on the ledge where the finish was damaged.  Then we'd use the sand-blaster, or some super coarse sandpaper to rough up the pink & go over the whole thing again with the Rustoleum paint.  It's self leveling, so you "shouldn't" be able to tell where the blemishes were.  (Hopefully).

This is where we're at after the weekend.  The thing that ultimately seemed to work the best (between sanding blocks, heat gun, sandblasting, buying two drill attachments {caused the burn marks}, & an electric sander) was the electric sander.  It was slow going, but we eventually got the bottom of the tub done.  We still have to soften the lines between the old & new finish & sandblast/sand the pink to rough it up before we {re}paint.  Hopefully by next week it'll be good as new.  Until then I'll have to keep converting Grady's bath tub photos to B&W to help hide the pink splotches!

Wish me luck that I'll have enough forearm strength to finish sanding this week!  :)