Getting Rid of the Painted Bathroom Floors

One of the biggest questions I have asked since we moved in is, "Who in the world paints tiled floors?"  Apparently some previous owner thought this was a great idea, so they did just that.  To make it worse, both bathroom floors were painted baby blue (to match the baby blue shower and tub maybe?) and then to make it even worse, the previous owner was in a wheelchair, which caused the paint to get all scratched up so that the tile showed through in some spots. 

Here's a good view of the main bathroom floor when we moved in:

After some discussion, we decided we would wait to re-tile the floor for a while, and in the mean time, just remove the paint.  Of course the tile underneath does not match the grey and seafoam green towels and shower curtain I got for the wedding, but I think we can make it work until we are ready to take the time (and money) to replace the tile.  Even though it's not exactly what I would pick for myself, the tile underneath is actually in good condition.

We bought a huge thing of Citristrip:

The instructions say to wait 30 minutes and then brush off the paint.  After one coat and an hour, then another coat and an hour and not much luck removing the paint with either a scraper or a copper scrubber, we decided to really pile it on and let it sit over night.  I woke up in the morning to a bunch of bubbly paint:

I used a paint scraper and most of it came up pretty easily.  To get the rest up I used a copper scrubber, and repeated with one more coat of Citristrip and more scrubbing.  It was not an easy job, but now the baby blue paint is gone for the most part!  All that is left is a little bit in the cracks, we are going to try a grout stripper next and hopefully that will be the end of it.

Here is the before and after:

And a close up of the tile, not the best thing ever, but SO much better than chipping baby blue paint!