Bathroom Refurbish Done Inexpensively

Our shower door and partition trim (aluminum) have seen better days. The water in Maricopa is heavily laden with minerals which cause the metal to corrode rather quickly. As such our door looked rather disgusting in spots where the corroded metal "grew" a whitish substance eating away the paint. We tried cleaning it with various heavy duty cleaners, but nothing helped. Fortunately, my industrious and talented husband decided to take it apart and clean it up. Unfortunately, however, once he got the door and partition apart he realized it might not be so easy to put back together – especially without directions.

We went to Lowe’s and Home Depot thinking we could buy a new door with the accompanying partition. Boy did we get some sticker shock -- $300 and up for a custom replacement. Again, as in all other projects that involve dumping money into a house  in today's market we decided it just wasn’t worth it. We had to revert back to plan A which was clean it up, repaint it and put it back together. We estimated this would be a relatively easy project costing no more than $15 for paint and sandpaper.

Clean up involved sanding all metal pieces and cleaning with alcohol wipes. After a couple of coats of high quality semi-gloss paint the pieces were re-assembled in the bathroom with only a few minor glitches (and a fresh coat of paint to the walls). Much to our surprise and happiness -- it looks great! One of the positive aspects of cleaning it up was it had originally been brown – all the other fixtures in the bathroom are black satin save the lighting fixtures which will be painted later this week. I wasn’t really sure we could pull it off without it looking like it was painted by a novice, but it turned out quite well.