So maybe it wasn't that crazy

 the kitchen - before
When we first moved into our new apartment we were surprised that all the tile in the kitchen had been painted over. You'd have to be crazy to paint over tile, we thought. But sure enough, at some point the landlord hired a painter with a spray gun who painted the entire apartment (walls, ceilings, fixtures and everything) off-white. The only room to escape this whiteout was the bathroom, whose turquoise and black tiles gave us an idea of what to expect under the paint in the kitchen.

what we found

But maybe they weren't so crazy after all. When we started scraping the paint off the tile we discovered that before the great apartment whiteout, someone had tried to paint the tile in a checkerboard pattern with less than fabulous results. It appears that they started painting but never got very far and what they did do was pretty sloppy. The paint the would-be checkerboard painters used was very persistent and after hours of scrubbing and scraping it was easy to see why the landlord opted to just paint over it.

But that still doesn't explain painting the transom windows.

Comments

ginger said…
Ah!!! That is so crappy! So what are you going to do? You could check out restore for some tiles on the cheap cheap and redo it yourself? I love the original colour...
January 6, 2010 at 7:28 AM
Metanoia said…
You shouldn't paint over tiles with ordinary paint, but you can actually get a special tile paint. I saw it done really well in a heritage style Australian house. The owners wanted to keep with the heritage appearance, but have the modern waterproofing. They painted the tiles the same colour as the walls and you can't notice the walls are tiled to a certain point unless you really look close as it is such a good job.
January 30, 2010 at 2:20 AM
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