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PBRA MEMBER MAKES BIZ-JOURNAL.COM

Militello brings family, business back to Crystal Lake

By CHRIS FREEMAN - cfreeman@nwherald.com

Travis Haughton - thaughton@nwherald.com Mike Militello of Renew Kitchen & Bath stands in front of a pair of shower displays he uses at trade shows to demonstrate the refinishing options he offers. His product also works on countertops, cabinets and tile. (Travis Haughton)

CRYSTAL LAKE - Ten years ago, Mike Militello packed up his belongings and headed west, moving from his native Crystal Lake to the open range of Colorado. "I was 28 years old, single, and I was looking for something different," he said. "I thought that I liked this fishing and camping thing, being around nature." Militello got into commercial real estate in Colorado before settling down with a family.

He changed professions, moving into kitchen and bath refinishing, then headed home. Today, Militello, his wife Kim and their children Nick and Bella are back home in Crystal Lake, where Militello has opened Renew Kitchen & Bath out of their home."My younger sister got married and we came back for the wedding, and we started talking about coming back," Militello said. "I wanted to expand the business, and we had started talking about going to Denver, but the kids love our family and we missed be around the family, so we said let's look at moving back." Time was of the essence, though, especially for Kim Militello, an elementary school teacher. "She looked at me and said 'If we're going to do something, we either have to do it now or wait,' so that kind of put things under the gun," Militello said. As it turned out, the family believed that the timing was perfect. "I think it had to be our destiny," Militello said. "We put our house on the market for sale or lease, and in a couple of weeks, we had the house leased.

Right away, [Kim Militello] started looking at jobs and she got a job with District 47 right off the bat. And the home I grew up in my parents still owned and they said 'Hey, we'll rent this to you when the current tenant's] lease is over. "Everything just kind of fell right into place. We thought someone must be telling us it makes sense to move out here." Militello said he got into kitchen and bath refinishing after getting "a bit burned out" in real estate. Having done construction work over the summers growing up, he said he wanted to find a trade that related to real estate to start with. "I looked at the market out here, and there's a few more people in this market than Colorado, so we can certainly make the business work here," Militello said. "I'm going on three years now; I didn't want to start as a general contractor, I was looking for something unique that not every company does.

There are more guys you can find that install cabinets than guys that can refinish them." The company does refinishing for bathtubs, tile, fiberglass and countertops, helping transform kitchen and baths for a fraction of the cost of replacing the fixtures, Militello said. "We don't have to tear out a bathtub, so that saves some money," he said. "Another kind of niche I was looking to get into is there are more people who have trouble getting out of their tubs, so they have to come in and pull out the tub and put a shower panel in. We can turn that tub into a walk-in shower, rather than tear everything out."

More Press: PBRA MEMBER The PAINTED OTTER MAKES NEW YORK TIMES - "This article appeared in print nationally on March 5, 2009, on page D2, in the New York edition, of the New York Times and can be found here.

A New Life for the Old Tub

By JAY ROMANO
Published: March 4, 2009

WHEN a refrigerator is damaged or dented, it is easy enough to buy a new one and have the deliverymen deal with the old one. But what do you do when the 800-pound gorilla in your bathroom — the tub — has lost its youthful glow?

You can refinish it, cover it with a custom-fit liner or — the most costly option — kick it to the curb and start over.

There are four common kinds of tub, said Jane Powell, a contributor to Old House Journal and the author of "Bungalow Bathrooms" (Gibbs Smith, 2001), a sourcebook for creating and restoring stylish bathrooms. One is the porcelain-covered cast-iron tub, introduced in the early 1900's and still made today. The other three, all of which became popular in the late 1960s, are the porcelain-covered pressed-steel tub, the solid acrylic version and the acrylic-coated fiberglass tub.

Buying a tub seems like a fairly quick and inexpensive fix — a new fiberglass one can run as little as $300 or $400 — but installation can be the deal breaker. Not only does it require a plumber to make the connections, Ms. Powell said, but floor and wall tiles often won't align with the new tub, requiring a tile expert's services. When all is said and done, buying and installing a tub could cost more than $2,000, she said. And you'd still have that 800-pound gorilla to get rid of.

As a result, many homeowners opt to refinish their tubs, which costs $400 to $500.

"Just about any old bathtub can be refinished to look like new," said Nathan Oettinger, the owner of the Painted Otter Refinishers (paintedotter.com) in Middletown, N.Y.