Glenlochan: Saving the Clawfoot

We continue to refurbish original items from the home that we stowed away in safety (aka, expensive storage units) before the demolition. One such item is a cute clawfoot tub that we had planned to put in the downstairs master bath in a space of honor underneath the bay window. Although clawfoots are typically a dime a dozen, in bad shape, and beyond heavy, this one had a few things going for it. First of all, we learned early on that it is a less common tub since it's only 4.5 feet long, and not 5 feet, which is more typical. The idea of having a more rare clawfoot was irresistible, I have to admit. And, it wasn't in too bad of shape, but clearly needed to be re-done. It is however, beyond heavy.

The first challenge was to find someone who could re-glaze the clawfoot in our small town. There were plenty of businesses an hour away in Richmond and Norfolk, but none of them would let us bring the tub to them to re-do it (none have facilities anymore) and all wanted to do it in place in the bathroom...but they weren't willing to drive to our small town. After many, many calls, referrals, research, etc., I finally found a wonderful re-glazer (not sure if that is a word!) and he was willing to re-glaze the inside of the tub on site, and he wasn't overly worried about having the water in the bathroom all hooked up.

Although I had originally planned to have both the inside and outside of the tub professionally re-done, I learned that most providers don't want to mess with the outside (apparently they typically need to be sandblasted) but I had enough people tell me that I could do the outside myself (since the outside doesn't hold water like the inside), so I decided to take it on. I wasn't planning on sandblasting it, but the outside was peeling enough to tell me that someone had painted the outside more recently with a latex paint DYI job (done poorly). So, I was hopeful that it would be a fairly easy stripping job followed up with a spray painting job. How tough could it be? (I should have learned by now never to ask that question...)

Here's the starting point - isn't it just too cute?

The first trick was getting it flipped over. We found a neat date stamp on the bottom (1924).

We removed the feet (also repainted and rusting) and I began coating it in Strypeze.

What I thought was a one coat of latex paint turned out to be layers and layers of paint. It was really a walk through the decades - under the neutral off-white, was a deep red, followed by a garish yellow and under that, a 50's aqua green - interspersed with a healthy amount of surface rust:

When reinforcements arrived, we moved the tub up onto heavy duty saw horses to make the stripping a lot easier. After I had removed as much as possible with Strypeze, I moved to my favorite tool, the palm sander and removed a lot more using very coarse grit. Then I wire brushed it with a heavy duty wire brush attached to Rob's drill. A lot of elbow grease later, this was the result:

I quickly learned why most people recommend sandblasting. But, I did get it very smooth using my various tools and many hours later, I was ready to base coat it with a self etching primer.

Once the base coat had completely dried, I think used a beautiful white appliance epoxy spray paint and put on multiple coats, with a little careful light sanding in between. And, because we ran out of paint, Rob had to recoat it during the week for me. Unfortunately, it chose that week to rain, so he also had to keep tarping and un-tarping the tub to protect it from the elements. Meanwhile, back in Philly, I went through a similar process with the four claw feet, made a lot more difficult by the detail, but my dremel was a huge help on these.

We decided to "fancy them up" a bit, which took a lot more time and careful painting, but I loved the end result. When I brought them back to VA completely re-done, Rob couldn't believe they were the same feet. Silver talons grasping a high gloss black ball.

Last weekend, we had to get the tub from its resting place on the sawhorses in the back yard, to its waiting place of honor in the bathroom complete with floor plumbing - the re-glazer was arriving the next day to do the inside of the tub:

Unfortunately, we didn't have reinforcements so Rob was stuck with me as his moving partner. I don't have his upper body strength and my knee is still not 100%, so it was a challenging endeavor, but with one stop to rest, we did manage to get it in place by ourselves. Miraculously without damaging the tub, tile, or any walls or doors. I hope I never have to move that thing again.