Bathtub Reglazing Cost

There has been a lot of question lately in the tub refinishing industry in respect to cost, there is a lot of competition which forces the refinishing industry to lower their costs in order to compete. You will see many advertisements stating a very low cost, sometimes as low as $150.00 and stating it will only take a couple of hours. What is happening is they are sacrificing quality service with lower prices!

Let me start with this, it takes at least 1-2 hours for a quality primer to set before applying the top coat! any less than that and there is a possibility of delayed cure and possible failure of finish. Quality primer is essential to the success of the finish and many companies are sacrificing the epoxy or poyurthane primer for a lower quality shellac based fast drying primer to move things along. This will certainly affect the longevity of the finish as these products are not designed for wet conditions. Some companies will skip this step altogether for the sake of moving along to another job! Definite finish failure! So, there is minimum 1-2 hours for priming.

Lets talk about preparation, this is probably the most time consuming and crucial part of the reglazing process and there are a number of things to do before any material is sprayed on.

1. Caulking needs to be scraped off and sanded at intersections to ensure complete removal. Caulking is a contaminant and will cause the finish to fail - 20 minutes to possibly 1 hour
2. The tub needs to be cleaned with Ajax to remove soap scum - 20 minutes
3. The tub needs to be acid etched - 30 minutes
4. Surrounding areas need to be covered to protect from over spray - 30 minutes to possibly 1 hour
5. The tub needs to be solvent wiped to remove oils from hands during the foregoing processes
6. The tub needs to be dusted with a tack cloth - 5 minutes

These six processes alone represent a possible time frame of 3 hours. What are we up to now? possibly 5 hours! Cleaning the equipment in between spraying and when finished - 30 minutes, paper pulling - 10 minutes, caulking - 10 minutes (but only after the finish has dried to the touch - 30 minutes up to 1 hour and sometimes even the next day!) What are we up to now? lets round off this example to 2 hours, that's a total of 7 hours so far.

Now, some jobs may not be as labor intensive and this time estimate is just an example of the possibility. You can give or take an hour or so depending on the experience of the finisher but the bottom line is this, it takes more than a couple of hours to do the deed and anyone telling you so is lying. You can rely on the better part of a day to reglaze a tub.

Lets get to cost. Quality products cost money and any refinisher should get paid what he is worth (at least $45-$50 an hour). A typical tub reglaze will cost roughly $70 in materials (primer, urethane, plastic, paper, tape, respirator elements and so on...) If a tub takes 7 hours @ $50/hour = $350, materials $70 = $420. We are not factoring in traveling costs cause we assume the refinisher is eating that cost. We are not factoring in the possibility of stripping an existing finish! So, a typical tub reglaze should cost between $350 and $420. As the old saying goes "You get what you pay for" especially in this business!