While shopping around for tub refinishers, I was quoted a price of $200 to refinish the tub feet. A set of new feet would have run about $250. And neither of those solutions would give us the option of an oil rubbed bronze finish - the finish we've selected for the plumbing and electrical fixtures.

So, I decided to try repainting the feet myself. After all, if I completely screwed it up I'd just hire the tub refinisher and they'd strip the paint off anyway. But if it did work, I saved us a lot of money.

I started by stripping off all of the paint on the feet. This involved the use of a heat gun, razor blade and fan - to keep me cool . It took about 1 hour per foot to strip off all of the paint. Once the paint was removed, I took the feet outside to be painted. The first coat of paint was a copper metallic option of Rust-o-leum. I went with Rustoleum paint to seal the metal and hopefully keep it from rusting. Once the copper paint finished drying, I used a black hammered satin finish paint. I gave the feet a light covering with the black paint. I was hoping the end result would look something like oil rubbed bronze. The following pictures show the transformation.

Before

After Stripping Paint

After First Coat of Paint

The Finished Product - Oil Rubbed Bronze

For those of you that don't know what oil rubbed bronze looks like, here is a color sample.../p

I don't know about you, but I think the faux painting worked. And, the best part, it only cost me $10!