Vintage Tiles: Uncovering a Secret

On the walk-through the tile was painted a glossy white.

A few walk-throughs are hardly enough time to discover all the details of a new home. It's only when you've moved in (and possibly lived there a few years) that many of a space's secrets start to reveal themselves. Our kitchen backsplash tiles were painted white when we moved in, and flaking paint revealed cute tiny white tiles below. But a little elbow grease discovered that the tiles were not plain old white at all.

The paint was hiding a sweet retro tile pattern — our house was built in 1958 so we're assuming they're original to the kitchen. We're embarking on some minor kitchen renovations and now that we've discovered the tile we can think about how to update the countertops and cabinets to feel harmonious. It's important to me to keep as many original elements of the house that we can, if they are worth keeping. Now we just have to finish!

If you're wondering how we removed the paint from the tile — after trying a hair dryer and several chemicals we were ready to jump to heavier chemicals when we discovered a natural solution: hot vinegar! It works wonders for removing paint from glass, and seems to work well on tile as well and gets them clean and shiny as a bonus, the only downside is the potent smell. Read this post for a vinegar paint removal how-to.

Images: Sarah Rainwater

Comments (26)

The former owner of my condo had painted over the tile in the bathroom. I also tried various chemicals. Wish I had heard of the hot vinegar solution. I ended up soaking heavy duty paper towels from the hardware store in hot water, sticking them to the tiles and leaving them. After ten minutes I was able to fairly easily scrap the paint off.

Oh sweet Jesus! What a great surprise. Most people just discover things like mold and not gold specked tile.

Who paints tile?

Neat!

That's exciting to find!

Cute tile! Hope it is possible to preserve while replacing your counters. I think I remember hearing that when you rip out your old counters the tile usually comes off as well.

Thanks for the hot vinegar tip! After too many hours inhaling citrus strip in our 1920s house...we uncovered fabulous two tone green tile in one bathroom and yellow and black tile in the other (both had been painted white.)

Does the vinegar work in the grout, too?

I too have an unfortunate painted-tile situation in my lovely 1920s bathroom (who does THAT?). I thought the project might be beyond my skills and chemical tolerance, but this sounds doable with the hot vinegar.

Does anyone have a time-per-square foot estimate on this sort of project? Like, could I do a small bathroom in a weekend?

What a great find! And thank you for the hot vinegar tip.

Gotta try. Also have painted tile in one of the bathrooms in my circa 1937 cottage. This seems totally doable for me, since it is only a backsplash over the sink that is painted over and the tile around the shower still exists and I'm assuming they match. They are nice aqua squares. And may I join the chorus of people saying why paint over tile? Especially in my case, where cover paint is a very pale blue to match the walls and not very far from color of other tiles. Just don't get it. It does provide me with an opportunity to rail at the unfortunate and horrid taste of the former owners. In addition to this, they gutted the main bath, getting rid of what appear to have been some sweet built-ins. (We have the original blue prints.) The bathtub in that room was originally a dusty pink. I know this because their resurfacing job is coming off. In a weird case of psychic decorating, we painted the bathroom this very color before the paint started to flake on the tub, revealing the original color scheme. The house was talking to me!

Funny that everyone commenting is anti white painted tile, and yet we see so many before and afters "I painted it white!"

The kitchen in my first house had 1 inch ceramic tile up three quarters of all the walls. We thought it had been painted an ugly brown color. Started to wipe if off and discovered it was smoke residue from 45 years of smokers in the house. Many boxes of TSP later, we had lovely white and beige 1 inch tiles on our kitchen walls.

mirroredlens- Maybe the hot vinegar speeds it up but my hot wet towel technique took weeks. I would do about 3 paper towel squares at a time,go away for ten minutes, do something else and come back and scrape.

And I am with the people who ask "who does this?" Paint does not want to stick to tile, don't try to make it.

Exciting!

But, I have to be honest. I am seriously considering painting the off white tile wall (chair rail height) in my rental bathroom. The tile floor, toilet, tub, vanity, door, and door frame are all white, but the tile wall is off white and it drives me crazy. Especially since the tile is neither vintage nor original. And I just happened to notice that the off white tile is the same price as the white tile at Home Depot.

It also doesn't help that I painted the wall above the tile black...

Please tell me I'm not a bad person for wanting to do this?

I do feel better knowing that I could remove the paint with hot vinegar when we move out.

mosaicwench, that's nauseating! At least you got a nice reward after dealing with that. Yikes.

Haha! Had EXACTLY the same in my apartment, I just ripped out everything and had a whole new bathroom installed. Still living with the white painted tile in the kitchen though. BTW, the bathroom tile was not vintage, they were standard cheapo porcelain, before anyone gets upset! :-)

I used some vinegar + a Mr. Clean magic eraser to remove some paint specks and a big black streak from our washer (it must have rubbed up against something black and rubber during the move). It worked like a charm.

Our kitchen tile was also painted white.

It took lots of scrubbing but we eventually cleaned off all the paint with Clorox Green Works.

Really...who does paint tile?? That's like finding money in a wall.

CanadianTired and bodicegoddess: english people do paint over tiles. Don't ask me why, the result is always horrible, but they insist doing it!!!

Who paints tile? The same person who paints wood or brick. Someday, they too will be uncovered and lambasted.

If you saw my kitchen backsplash from the 80s or early 90s (colour just looks dirty smudges on off white) with the random brass pattern here and there you would want to paint it too. I haven`t...it just mocks me.

Have you seen this? Now you can have a coffee table to match you new tiles:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MID-CENTURY-DANISH-MODERN-MOSAIC-COFFEE-TABLE-EAMES-ERA-/310283509728?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item483e569fe0#ht_500wt_922

*your new tiles

This area of your kitchen is identical to the setup of ours! Our house was built in 1963. A few differences: our tiny wall oven is original, and the drawer under the stove is usable (we found out the hard way that it can only store certain things). I'm curious to see what else you'll do to update it! Do you have a glass cutting board built into the laminate countertop? We do!