Refinishing Kitchen Sink
I have a single-basin, porcelain-clad steel sink, only a few years old. Where the faucet is normally placed, I now have a badly stained area. I have tried sink/tub cleaners and bleach, which will bring it back somewhat, but the stain re-appears after a couple of days. I've been reading about bathtub refinishing (I need that as well on a 45-year old tub) and wonder if anyone has tried professional refinishing of a kitchen sink. I'd like to get opinions before I get into the task of figuring out just who I would hire. Any thoughts in this matter will help. Oh, and yes, I've looked at the bathtub refinish thread with great interest. Thanks. The bottom line is that what you're wanting to do won't really help much. You're better off with the existing porcelain enamel in the sink than top coating it with a softer coatings which won't stand up and wear as well. The kind of coating you have on a kitchen sink or enameled steel bathtub is something called Porcelain Enamel, which is a special kind of powder coating. Because powder coatings are melted onto the steel, they can be made very much harder than air dry coatings like epoxy paints or moisture cure polyurethane paints, which are about the hardest field applied coatings you can get and are what's commonly used to refinish bathtubs. So, your sink will look great for a while, but the refinishing paint used on your sink simply won't have the hardness and durability of porcelain enamel and won't last as long as the old porcelain enamel did. Welcome to Powder Coatings 101: With existing technology, all Powder Coatings involve the process of electrostatically spray painting a mixture of electrically charged plastic resins and coloured pigments onto a metal object that has the opposite electrical charge. Because those plastic resins and pigments are most attracted to the areas of the metal object which have the thinnest coating of resins and pigments on them, and therefore the highest electrical charge to attract the sprayed particles, electrostatic spray painting results in a very uniform coating of particles over the metal object. That metal object is then baked in an oven until the plastic resins melt and fuse together. The coloured pigment particles remain suspended in the molten plastic. When that coated metal object cools, the plastic solidifies and the powder coating on it will typically be about 3 times as hard and durable as air dry coatings like epoxy paints. The difference between powder coatings, porcelain enamels and ceramic coatings is just the temperature that the coating is baked at. Generally, the higher the baking temperature, the stronger, harder and more durable the resulting coating. Now, porcelain enamel doesn't stain. It's very impermeable, so any discolouration is only on the surface, not into the porcelain enamel. I think you're just not using the bleach properly. Do this: Go to your local supermarket and buy some Borax in the same aisle that you find the laundry detergents in. (20 Mule Team Borax is about the most common Borax sold in Canada and the US) Also buy some bleach. Get Chlorox or Javex which are both 6.25% NaOCl as some no-name bleaches are only 5.25% NaOCl. Mix the Bleach and Borax to make a paste and apply that paste around the base of the faucet over this stained area. This bleach paste won't harm the chrome plating on the kitchen faucet either. Then cover that paste with Saran Wrap or any Cling Wrap to prevent the bleach from drying out and losing it's effectiveness. Leave that on for several days. Then remove it and see what the sink looks like. I use this same procedure for cleaning mildew off the silicone caulk around bathtubs, and it works great. The bleach is the active ingredient, so you can use any powder instead of Borax. But, what I like about using Borax is that the resulting paste is quite sticky so that you can use it on vertical surfaces as well, and it doesn't gravity segregate at all. You can use baby powder (Talcum powder, or talc) instead of Borax but the resulting paste is not as sticky. Similarily, baking powder also works, but because it's much denser than Borax or talc, it tends to segregate to the bottom of the mixing container when mixing up the paste, so you continuously have to mix the paste to keep it in a uniform consistancy, and preventing the baking powder to settle to the bottom and the bleach from accumulating at the top of the paste. You can also try any acid to remove that stain. Porcelain enamel, like all powder coatings is a plastic and won't be harmed bleach or acid, even a fairly strong hydrochloric acid which you can buy in the form of a toilet bowl cleaner at any place listed under Janitorial Equipment Supplies in your yellow pages phone directory. PS: Probably the hardest coating in your house is the ceramic coating inside your oven. This is a special form of powder coating, just like porcelain enamels, but is baked on at about 1300 degrees F. Normal powder coatings are baked on at about 350 degrees, and porcelain enamels are baked on at about 700 to 900 deg. F. One of the guys I know that until recently has been involved in the normal powder coating business wants to start doing ceramic coatings, but the high temperature ovens are quite expensive, and you need large ovens to ceramic coat large objects. Powder coatings started in Australia, and that's where the latest change in this technology comes from as well. The Australians now have a way of soaking non-metallic objects in water saturated with powder coating resins and pigments, and then baking those objects to produce a powder coating on non-metallic items. My understanding is that by using this method, you can produce powder coatings on wood. So far, we don't have this technology in North America. Nestor, thanks for the detailed reply. I was not entirely clear as to the location of the stain. It is actually in the basin at the area where the water from the faucet normally hits the sink. And it's ugly brown, about 6 inches by 3 inches. Since your suggestion would put the sink out of commission for several days, I conclude that my best approach would be to buy an new sink. Sadly, that steel-enameled sink replaced an old, but tough cast iron sink. Your information gives me what I need to make a decision. I'm not sure I would get that candor from a sink repair company. Thanks again. David: This is the first time I've ever heard of a stain in porcelain enamel, so you should be able to remove that discolouration. From it's description, it could just be an iron stain from either iron in the water or you're having iron supply pipes in your house. Have you tried using hydrochloric acid on it? If you open your yellow pages phone book to Janitorial Equipment Supplies any of the places listed there will sell you some hydrochloric acid based toilet bowl cleaner that'll typically be about 20% HCl.
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