Question: We've had our bathtub resurfaced twice, but with three kids it doesn't hold up well. It has peeled entirely off the bottom of the tub and is peeling away from the walls. I'd like it gone. How can I remove it?

Answer: Paul Burns, from the highly-rated Porcelain Tub Restorations in Bowie, Md., says that you can get hurt trying to do this yourself.

"You need a respirator and proper ventilation equipment. If you try to remove the peeling coating yourself you can pass out or burn yourself," Burns says. The products needed to remove the coating are very strong and can also melt and damage other parts of the bathroom.

“It’s important to look at why this failed before. There’s probably an issue – there could be previous damage that wasn’t repaired correctly or they didn’t use the proper primer or pull the drain. If the bathtub refinishing was done properly and if the tub was etched correctly, a good primer and topcoat were applied, and the drain was removed, the tub should last at least five years and up to 15," Burns says. 

If the kids are playing with hard toys in the bathtub and banging them against the tub and the walls, even a good refinished tub wouldn't be able to hold up. He suggests giving the kids softer toys.

The process is intensive and it can be hard to tell how hard stripping the tub is going to be ahead of time. Burns says that to strip a tub they charge $100 an hour, which includes labor and materials.

"Once it is stripped, you can see what it is like and then decide whether you want to keep it or get it done properly," he says.