When most people move into a new apartment they have a mix of excitement and exhaustion, but looking in my new bathroom I only felt disgust. After a month of looking for the perfect home in a new town (New York City to be exact), I settled on a cozy rental in Brooklyn, with the promise from my landlord to have a clean apartment from top to bottom. After carrying furniture and all the boxes up the seemingly endless stairs, my first instinct was to get cleaned up in the shower.
So you can imagine my surprise starring at bathtub that looked filthy, with stains from water and mold covering the bottom. Glazing on the powder blue tub had worn through the tub’s surface, revealing an odd mix of gray patches of what I assumed to be grout. Even the drain and stopper had started to rust through, although those could be more easily replaced. Against my own better judgment I took a shower that night, only to feel less clean than before I had stepped inside.
While the landlord had promised to restore the tub to working condition when I signed the lease, the crew had yet to replace the old tub. The next day I called them to come replace the tub, but now the was a catch; they could come to re-glaze our bath surfaces, but we would not be able to use the bathroom for another 48 hours!
Later that day to crew arrived and took over the entire bathroom, spending the rest of the afternoon cleaning and spraying glaze over the tub. Every surface needed to be taped over or else the glazing would ruin the rest of our bathroom. I could barely stay inside my apartment with all the noxious fumes, even with all the windows open. Two days later I stepped in the shower for the first time, more worried about ruining the tub’s new finish than enjoying the bath.
Recently my friend told me about the same problems during his apartment hunt, so after hearing about our ordeal he wanted to find a better solution. Instead of asking their landlord to re-glaze the bathtub, he sent them about link to acrylic bath resurfacing, which can be custom fit for any bathtub. Because this took less time to install, their landlord had no trouble replacing the old fixtures with a new acrylic bath liner.
Replacing the bathtub through acrylic bath resurfacing would have been a much more affordable option and a better investment in the apartment for the landlord. Especially now the bathtub’s surface is beginning to wear off again, I’d want to ask my landlord to simply replace the tub with an acrylic shower surface this time. Maybe it will be much easier for the next tenant who moves in, and next time I’ll know much better what to ask for in my apartment hunt.