Bathtub Refinishing & Reglazing in Los Angeles County

Los Angeles County is really dozens of housing markets stitched together, and each one wears out its bathrooms a little differently. The older streetcar-era neighborhoods — Pasadena, South Pasadena, Long Beach, Whittier, Alhambra and much of the city of Los Angeles itself — are full of Spanish Revival and Craftsman homes with heavy cast-iron tubs, wall-hung porcelain sinks and built-in ceramic tile that was set by hand. Those fixtures were made to last a century, and most of them have. What they have not kept is their finish: decades of scrubbing leave the enamel dull, chipped at the rim and rust-stained around the drain.

The postwar boom filled in the San Fernando Valley (Burbank, Glendale, San Fernando), the South Bay (Torrance, Lakewood, Downey, Norwalk, Hawthorne) and the San Gabriel Valley (Covina, West Covina, El Monte, Temple City) with tract homes whose bathrooms are now sixty to seventy years old. This is where we see the classic mid-century look: porcelain-on-steel tubs surrounded by 4×4 ceramic tile in pink, mint green, yellow or blue, matching colored sinks and toilets, and cultured-marble vanity tops added in the 1970s and 80s. The colors are dated, but the tile and tubs are usually sound — exactly the situation color-change refinishing was made for.

Newer master-planned communities in Santa Clarita, Palmdale and Lancaster, Diamond Bar and Walnut were built with lightweight fiberglass and acrylic tub-shower units. These fade, go chalky and can crack or flex at the floor after twenty or thirty years. Because a one-piece unit is often installed before the walls go up, replacing it means cutting into drywall and tile; refinishing the unit — or fitting a bathtub inlay over a cracked floor — solves the problem in a day.

Los Angeles County is also the largest rental market in the state. Apartment owners and property managers in Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Culver City, Inglewood, Koreatown and across the county use refinishing to turn units between tenants without pulling permits or losing weeks of rent. A tub, sink and surround can be refinished in one visit and back in service the next day. Coastal homes in Malibu, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach and the Palos Verdes Peninsula see the same wear plus salt air, which accelerates rust at any chip in the enamel — another reason to repair and seal the surface early rather than replace the whole fixture later.