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I have a large tiled fountain in my front yard. When I bought the house (~10 years ago), the fountain looked great with blue and white tiles. After about 6 months, the blue tiles started to lose their paint. Finally, they looked so bad that my wife and I used pool paint to repaint them, after cleaning everything well. After about a year, that paint started coming off and now all of the blue tiles are completely grey, with no paint left.

I'm thinking of:

cleaning everything well

sanding the originally blue tiles to provide a good surface for paint

letting everything completely dry for about a month in the hot San Diego summer sun

repainting the blue tiles with the pool paint

sealing everything using Gorilla clear rubber sealant

I think tiling over the existing tiles would still require sealant and replacing the tile would cost a huge amount of money and time, to remove them, etc.

Any better ideas? Has anyone used Gorilla Clear Rubber Sealant on tile and grout?

I don't seem to be able to provide pictures. Maybe it's because I'm new to this group. I posted them to my own server and am linking them here:

Before

After

Followup: I've been reading all of the replies and also elsewhere on the net. Thanks, everyone, for the input. I really appreciate it!

I'm now thinking of putting down a few good layers of Gorilla Clear Waterproof Coat & Seal. It claims to stick to tile, so hopefully it will stick to all of the various layers of the tile (under the glaze and what's remaining of the glaze in places). It also claims to be paintable, so maybe I can use a good epoxy paint on top of it.

Thoughts?

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  • tile have a surface where noting will stick unless you roughen them
    – DIY75
    Commented Jul 11 at 6:29
  • @Traveler True, which is the reason that OP put the step 'sanding the originally blue tiles to provide a good surface for paint' into their list of steps.
    – quarague
    Commented Jul 11 at 11:32

2 Answers 2

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It is difficult to get paint to stick to tile. Even "pool paint" is designed for the cement/plaster parts of the pool, not the tile. The only paint that will reliably stick to tile is 2-part epoxy tile paint, which should be available at a good hardware store or paint shop. It is commonly available in white but can be tinted (to lighter shades, not dark colors). Whether or not there are tint bases available for darker colors would be a question that you would need to research.

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The previous answer is the approach you should be considering. Personally, after cleaning it, I would apply some sort of epoxy coating, or product that is a pond coating, I think Crommelin are the specialists for this, but Crommelin products may assume that the tiles are not fragile to begin with and also may not be clear, so may not be ideal, compared to something epoxy which if thick enough will create a whole new substrate to paint

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  • Well, as I mentioned, I'm thinking about "Gorilla Clear Rubber Sealant" over everything. Since that sealant is paintable, I could possibly paint on top of it, but I was actually thinking of painting the tiles (with 2-part epoxy, as mentioned in the previous comment) and then doing the rubber sealant over everything.
    – raj
    Commented Jul 12 at 23:59
  • I think the main issue you face is the surface of the tiles not being strong enough to not crumble, an epoxy coating that is thick enough will create a new surface above the tile surface , but if you get a leak, it could be catastrophic, but it will take some time for it to implode, it wont happen overnight as epoxy can fail but keep going for a very long time, a lot of boats have mushy wood underneath epoxy and can keep going for a long time
    – user113410
    Commented Jul 20 at 20:23

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