Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms - clawfoot tub ideas?

Hi,
We've recently purchased a SMALL house, with a SMALL bathroom. It has a clawfoot tub, and I'd like to dress it up a bit somehow. Is there a way to 'refinish' it to make it look newer? Can you just paint it or is there some special finish that has to be done?
Thanks for any help
Haley

If you want to dress up the outside, that is easly done with metal paint like rust-o-leum. At our last house which was 120-150 years old, the tubs interior finish was still in fairly good shape and we cleaned and buffed it. We picked a complementary color for the exterior and roughed up and primed the existing finish. We then put 2 coats of a burgandy satin rust-o-leum color on it to match the trim work and new floor we installed. The claws themselves we painted gloss gold and finished by painting the balls the claws held with satin white. That old tub never looked better. Also recently on HGTV a show was on about kitchen and bath make overs. This lady art painted a desrt scene in acrylic paint on a satin light western style green. It looked great. I missed that old tub, being 6'6" it was the only one I could actually sit in and relax my sore remodeling aching bones. In my newer 40 year old house, I put in an outside spa. Now I have relaxing jets to soothe my aging aching remodeling body.

Hope this helps.

Desk Jockey by Day, Home Improver the rest of the time.

Doug

Gotta love those clawfoots. My old house has one. To refinish it I took it out and turned it over. Sanded it and used rust remover on it. Primed it with rust stopper, used gloss white rustoleum and finished the feet with a pewter look. Replaced the spout and drain while I was at it. I was SHOCKED at the prices when I started looking at faucets for clawfoots! I wanted to put a shower in, but it would have cost about $300 for a decent one. I finally found a plain faucet for $20 at a local hardware store, and don't miss the shower at all!