About Sunnyvale Bathtub Resurfacing

The hands on the gun

Meet Islam Makchachev, lead refinisher

Islam Makchachev runs the spray work at Sunnyvale Bathtub Resurfacing and has been refinishing fixtures since 2014 — first apprenticing under a longtime South Bay refinisher, then building the local route he covers today across Sunnyvale and the wider Santa Clara Valley. He trained specifically in spray-applied acrylic-urethane coatings: the HVLP gun technique, the chemistry of two-part topcoats, and the prep that decides whether a finish lasts a decade or lets go in a season. The fixtures he is known for are the hard ones — heavy porcelain-over-cast-iron and clawfoot tubs in the older Heritage District and Cherry Chase homes, and the soft-floored fiberglass units that fill Sunnyvale's 1980s apartment stock.

“I can usually tell within thirty seconds of walking into a bathroom whether a tub is a clean reglaze or a problem,” Islam says. “The magnet, the way it sounds when I tap the rim, where the rust started — that tells me the substrate and the prep path before I quote a dollar. I would rather lose a job by telling someone their fiberglass floor is cracked through than take their money and watch my coating peel off a surface that was always going to move.”

That ethic shows up in how the work is run: thin sprayed coats instead of one heavy run that sags, an extra half-hour on the etch rather than a callback, and an honest read on the fixtures that should be replaced instead of coated. Islam personally handles or oversees the prep on every job, which is why the finish quality holds steady from a guest bath in Birdland to a turnover unit in Ponderosa. He is fully licensed and insured, and the warranty he hands you is one he expects to never use.

The work

What we refinish

We resurface five things, all with the same bonded coating system rather than a glue-in liner. Reglazing, refinishing and resurfacing mean the same thing here: prepping a fixture back to a sound, clean substrate, repairing the damage, then spraying a fresh acrylic-urethane topcoat that bonds to the surface.

• Bathtubs — porcelain-over-cast-iron, pressed steel and gelcoat fiberglass tubs brought back to a glossy white or color of your choice. ($735–$890)
• Showers — one-piece fiberglass and acrylic surrounds, including the crazed, chalky units common in Sunnyvale's rental stock. ($935–$1,040)
• Sinks — bathroom and kitchen basins, including cultured-marble vanity tops that have yellowed or etched. ($420–$495)
• Countertops — laminate, cultured marble and tile counters resurfaced without a tear-out. ($520–$645)
• Tile — wall and floor tile plus the grout lines, refinished to a clean even sheen. (from $530)

If a fixture is too far gone — a cast-iron tub rusted clean through, or fiberglass with structural flex — we tell you straight rather than take the job and watch the coating fail. Honest "no" answers are part of why landlords keep calling us back.

How we work

Our standards on prep

A reglaze lives or dies on prep. Coating that peels or delaminates almost always traces back to a surface that was not properly deep-cleaned, etched or scuff-sanded before the primer went down. Porcelain and enamel get an acid etch so the bonding primer grabs; fiberglass and acrylic get scuff-sanded instead, because acid does nothing on gelcoat. Chips, cracks and rust spots are filled and faired before any color is sprayed, never coated over and left to telegraph through.

We mask and ventilate the whole room so overspray stays contained, then lay multiple thin coats rather than one thick run that sags into orange peel. Done right, the finish lasts 10 to 15 years with normal care. The full walk-through is laid out on our process page if you want to see exactly what happens in your bathroom.

The fine print

Fully licensed, insured, and warranted

Sunnyvale Bathtub Resurfacing is fully licensed and insured. That matters most when something goes wrong: if a crew without coverage damages a floor or a fixture, the bill lands on you. Ours doesn't. Every quote you get is the price you pay — we don't add "surprise" charges once the masking tape is up.

Every job carries a written warranty on the finish, handed to you in writing rather than promised on a handshake. If the coating fails under normal use inside the warranty term, we come back and make it right. We'd rather prep a tub for an extra half hour than schedule a callback, but the warranty is there in plain language so you know where you stand.

Local knowledge

The Sunnyvale homes we work on

Sunnyvale's housing tells two stories, and both keep us busy. Much of the city went up between the 1970s and the 1990s as tech grew — condos and apartment complexes in Ponderosa, Lakewood, Ortega Park, Birdland, Raynor and Sunnyvale West, packed with one-piece gelcoat fiberglass tub-and-shower units. Those units fade, chalk and develop crazing — that fine spiderweb cracking — long before they actually fail. With fast tenant turnover and busy professionals who can't have a bathroom torn up for a week, a one-visit reglaze is the practical fix.

The older pockets are different. Around the Heritage District near Murphy Avenue, and in Cherry Chase and Washington Park, you'll find homes with original porcelain-over-cast-iron tubs worth saving — heavy, well-made fixtures that look new again with an acid etch and a fresh topcoat. We treat a 1950s cast-iron tub in Cherry Chase differently than a 1985 fiberglass surround in Lakewood, because the substrate decides the prep. Knowing which is which, block by block, is the part you can't fake.

Why reglaze

Reglaze versus replace

Reglazing exists because replacement is expensive, slow and messy. Pulling a tub means demolition, new plumbing, possible tile and wall repair, a permit in many cases, and days without a working bathroom. A reglaze typically saves 50 to 75 percent against that, and it's done in an afternoon. For a turnover unit in Ponderosa or a primary bathroom in Birdland, that math is hard to argue with. A sound fixture stays in place instead of heading to a landfill. Where a refinish makes sense, we'll quote it; where a fixture genuinely needs to go, we'll say so. The goal is a surface you're glad to use, not a sale.