After nearly a year (!) of working on those twenty-five vintage tin tiles, we finally got them installed yesterday.
The tiles had sat in the cellar for 5-6 years and were pretty rusty. After trying paint stripper and finding it did not work that well, I set up my electrolysis tank again and ran one tile at a time through the tank (about half of them had to be done twice). Even after the e-tank, I still had to use paint stripper on most of them.
Once down to fairly bare metal, each tile had to be carefully wire-brushed by hand (plus using a pick to remove stubborn paint in small detail areas), followed by a scouring pad to finish prepping the metal.
Everything then got washed with lacquer thinner and was primed and the color coated.
We’re now on the lookout for a nice chandelier to complete the look. I’ll hopefully be able to build the custom cabinets this winter that will finally finish out this room.
For comparison, here’s the room just after we started the tearout:
