apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Not sure what's greener, but similar posts on apartmenttherapy have concluded that re-glazing tends not to last very long. You might want to do a search on their website to see some of the user comments before you move forward either way...

If I was gonna trash the tub in the long-run anyway, I'd probably go to a salvage yard or try one of those Re-Use stores – you know where people donate their extra housing materials?

Think about the space you have in your bathroom- I have a late 40s ranch, and since new tubs seem to be either gargantuan jacuzzi style or thin/noisy fiberglass. For me the original tub fits the beyond tiny bathroom (ruling out the jacuzzi tub) and the low quality of fiberglass rules that out. We re-glazed, while it was stinky for a few days, we just left the door closed and the window open, hopefully minimizing the truly non-green aspects (offgassing).

Re-surfacing a tub does not last for many years, the new surface is a kind of plastic, and must be treated very gently, and even so, as a professional housekeeper, I see many many "peeling" bathtubs. Once the surface starts to degrade there is no way to repair it, it will need to be stripped and resurfaced again. If you are planning on only living in your house for a few years it will probably hold up for a while...

The offgassing of the resins is not the only non green thing about the process. The resins are highly toxic while they are in a liquid state, and I'm sure that the manufacturing of said chemicals is not "green"

Thanks everyone for your help! I'm leaning towards the resurfacing - the fact that we can afford to do it sooner rather than later, and the fact that it would be making use of something we already have makes me think that in spite of the chemicals, it's probably the better choice.

And if 5 (hopefully more!) years from now we end up having to replace it or resurface it again, perhaps there will be more options. :-)

What kind of tub are we talking here? A lot of the bathtubs that I've seen around tend to be the flimsy type pdx-R mentioned. I'm not sure they'd be worth resurfacing, or if you even could (there's not much to them anyway.)

But, yeah, getting a new tub would create its own pollution (although the stinkiest part would not be in your home.)

Where does one find long-lasting tubs these days? I, too, hope we get more options.

I lived in an apartment that resurfaced our tub. It's got to be one of the most toxic processes I've ever seen. The guys that did it, were very concerned about my cat being in the house at all. They said it's just that toxic. We ended up sealing off my master bedroom with tape, and full fans in the window to keep out the fumes. It took days for the stuff to stop off gassing to an unbearable smell level.

And after all that, the thing started peeling right off. It had to be done all over again. Even then, six months later, it was already bubbling. We are not weird, or hard on our tub, either. I just stand and shower in the thing. Nothing else.

It's a lot cheaper, and durable to just replace the tub with a Re-Store style industrial salvage tub.

If the tub is original to the house it is possible it is cast iron and can be recycled.

Peeling sounds as though the tub was already refinished. If this is the case, it may have been refinished with an acrylic paint that could be removed.

Current refinishing is often with epoxy paint which off gasses a lot of VOCs - hence the stink.

In my own home I recently removed a cast iron tub (blue and very slippery) and replaced it with a new cast iron tub from Toto. They had the smaller size I needed for the space.

Oh, glad I saw this post. My landlord was discussing refinishing my tub. I just used some CLR on it and it looks a lot better. I can't fix the chipping, but its minimal. I think I'd rather deal with it then all the nasty fumes everyone is mentioning. Yuck.