Repairing Grout

I love the idea of brick floors, but I am torn on whether I would do them again. I certainly would NOT put them in a bathroom again. They are in our powder bath and mom’s bathroom as well as at each entrance/exit that has a door to the exterior. My first mistake was that I did not by the sealed version of brick. You could get them pre-sealed. I bought the unsealed because I thought the sealed were too shiny. I tried to seal the brick after installation and did many many many many coats, but it was worthless. They are so porous and it did no good.

The installation of the brick floors is when our tile guy got up and left us. He quit. It was too hard. I ended up grouting some of the brick and it was a pain! Especially since I bought the unsealed brick. After grouting, I had to use muriatic acid to clean the grout off the brick. Another pain!

Immediately after moving in, pieces of our grout were falling out! This was only where we had the brick flooring. The cause could be anything… joint too wide, using the muriatic acid, poor installation job… who knows. I was learning to live with it and thought it made the house look old to have it falling apart (haha). But I wanted to try and fix it.

When I first started noticing the grout damage, I looked up how to repair grout. I read that you could not simply just patch the hole in the new grout as it wouldn’t adhere properly. If I wanted to replace grout, I had to remove the old grout. I took this as possibly meaning that I could remove just enough that touched the length of a tile and put new grout down the length of the tile. Surely I didn’t have to remove ALL the grout in the entire floor?I ended up just vacuuming the "holes" and didn't remove any more grout.

Dirty in Hole

Clean

I had left over grout so I mixed some and patched the holes. If this method didn’t work then I would chisel out the old grout around the one tile and see how that works.

So far, so good and no more holes in the grout. I still expect more holes to top up, as they always do, but I had over 20 holes in the grout, so this is a good improvement.

When it started to dry, I noticed that the grout color was not matching! I guess I didn’t mix it properly? No clue. The swatch color matched the color of my floor.

I have no holes, but there is white grout now! I then bought the Mapei Grout Refresh in my correct color and painted the new grout. I may have mixed the grout wrong, but I thought I could fix it by painting over it. The color on the bottle matched my grout when I held it up to the floor. But it did not change the color of the grout! I even pulled away my buffet in the foyer to see if the untouched grout was lighter. It wasn't.

My guess is that our grout has gotten that dirty over the years, or the sealant did something?? Still not sure. I bought a new sealant that I was going to try and use, but now I don’t want to seal in the color imperfection!

I’m going to see how the grout refresh holds up on these thick grout lines and go from there. I may even rub some dirt in it! I'm happy I have no more holes, so if I had to choose one imperfection over the other, I choose no holes. 

Time to get the grout dirty!

Painting Grout

I used Mapei’s Grout Refresh at the old house and have already used it in the new house.

During the construction of the new house, I did not cover ANY of my floors after they were installed.

Lesson #1 learned: cover the floors once they are installed. It will save a lot of cleaning work and avoid damage.

We used real marble hexagon tile in the master shower and I loved it. I remember picking out just the right color of grout (Mapei – Warm Gray). We used epoxy grout that is suppose to be awesome and color change resistant and mold resistant. However, we did not cover up the floor after it was installed. Once tile is installed in a shower, the hardware (glass door, showerhead, etc) can be installed. When our contractors came to install those items, their shoes were muddy. And we have clay as our soil and clay stains so bad! My grout was now orange!

It was hard to get pictures. From a distance you couldn’t tell, but every time I used the shower, I saw gross orange. It looked like we had a mold problem. Our shower was clean!

I looked into getting Grout Refresh to help, but couldn’t find it in the color I needed. I then thought about choosing a different color to change it to, but I loved the warm gray I had picked out. While we were at Lowes getting the tile cut for the Laundry Backsplash, I just glanced at the Mapei display for Grout Refresh and saw the color I needed!!! It hadn’t been there before. I got excited and bought it. 

Painting grout does not sound like a fun project, and I can’t say that I think it is. It’s not. You can’t get the area wet for 24 hours, so I waited until Mr. JCrew left for a work trip and stayed up one night and painted grout. It’s what I do for fun while he’s away! Haha.

I posted my first Instagram Story showing the process. However, I got it wrong. I’ve used the product twice now and never once read the directions. Or maybe I did and forgot. But I did not do it like the directions said. My IG Story said to paint it on, let it dry (but not completely) and then scrape off the paint from the tile. If you wait too long, the paint is on there for good. However, I found I could wet it a little and get it off. But if it’s been longer than 12 hours, it is not coming off. I tackled a small section at a time, so by the time I stopped painting, I could go to where I started and start cleaning the tile.

This is where I was wrong. The directions say to let the paint sit 30-60 minutes. Then spray it with water and let it sit another30 minutes and then clean the paint of the tile.

Before

I only tackled the orange grout in my shower. Thankfully the whole shower was not dirty, it was just where the shower door was. Now that it is painted, it feels brand new. Looks like it should have from Day 1 of living in our new house. I never got that fresh start with this shower.

I find myself looking at it over and over. So glad.

I highly recommend this product. Whether you’re trying to restore your original grout color, or want to change the previous owner’s bad color choice. This paint is also a sealer so it will protect from future stains.

You don’t have to be precise, but it still takes a while using a toothbrush or a small paint brush. Pour yourself a glass of wine and have lovely music playing in the background. It will be a long project!

UPDATE: I painted the grout of the shower floor in January of this year. The shower is used daily and over time, the paint has washed away! When I used this product before, I used it in the foyer, where it never gets wet. I would not recommend this product for routinely wet areas.

Laundry Room Backsplash

I shared how last Christmas I put up a backsplash in the laundry room and the kitchen. I finally found a tile I liked and was certain I would get tired of. I also had the time. I shared at the end of my post that I had leftover tile and was thinking of using this Christmas down-time to put it to use. I just had to psych myself up, and I did!

I didn’t calculate exactly how much tile I had before I started, but I would start at the top and work my way down until I ran out of tile.

I had my setup crew get the room ready.

I did not start in the center like I did on the other walls. I just started on the far side of the room and went from there. It ended up being perfect spacing. 

I did make sure that my first row was level. I placed a long level under the tile already on the wall and the tile I was placing.

Because I didn’t know how far I was going to go down, I back-buttered the tile. I used the smooth side of my trowel to put the adhesive on.

And the notched side to make the grooves needed.

The adhesive I used was by mapei.

I used the 1/8 inch spacers.

After placing the tiles on the wall, I’d hit them with my mallet.

The hammering is usually needed more for when you are applying tile to a wall that already has adhesive on it, but this step made me feel better, so I did. But the hammering would knock the spacers out.

My method was not the fastest way, but I was letting my perfectionist side come out and I was okay with that. I cleaned off every tile and the area around it after I laid the individual tile piece. I was trying to lighten my load at the end.

I was okay with having 3-4 rows of tile. I wanted enough that it disappeared behind the washer and dryer. When I got to the third row is when I counted how much tile I had and how far it would get me. I had enough tile I could make 10 rows! Obviously, I miscalculated how much tile I needed for the first project if I had this much tile leftover!

I only have a tile cutter and not a wet saw, so I could easily cut straight lines in tile, but not cut out spaces for the outlets, etc. I ended up marking all the tile and continued tiling and just left spaces.

I don’t recommend this. I was pretty good at marking the wall and picking the pattern back up, but there is one spot that I got off quite a bit. And it’s a spot that was not hidden! 

When I marked the tile, I used a special pencil. I put the tile in a position to mark one line.

Then I moved the tile to get the other line needed.

I then labeled the back of the tile with where it goes in the lineup so that I did not have to play too big of a guessing game when it came to installation.

I ended up having a large pile of tile that needed to be cut. Our local Lowes will cut your tile for you. They will only cut 10, but they offer this service and it is great! Our local Home Depot does not have this service. All you have to do is bring in the already marked tile. 

Lowes and Home Depot are not close to us, so I couldn’t just drive there every time I needed to cut a notch. That’s why I continued on laying tile so I could figure out all my cuts needed. Now, you do run into the off chance that you get a non-expert cutting your tile. They know how to operate the machine, but that’s it. Our guy kept saying he would not be perfect and I said I was okay with that. The only down side, is he was not cutting on my lines!

Now, to do the cuts out of the middle of a tile for an outlet, you make “Slivers” within the area you want to remove and then you break those slivers off. This is where our tile cutter did not follow my lines. His slivers went PAST my marked line. Oh well. I told the Lowes employee he did not have to remove all the slivers. I have the tools to do that, so I did it myself. I just needed the wet saw capability.

My sander would have taken a long time to smooth out those edges, and I was at the point that I didn’t care. I got it pretty good and I was okay with it.

Part of why I gave up, was while I was sanding, I broke a tile! I used too much force and just chipped off an edge. I still used the piece and it was fine. No one will be staring up close. But I didn’t want to risk messing up more tile for the sake of perfection.

I got all the pieces installed and finished for the night. Before you can grout, you need time for the adhesive to dry. I was ready for the grout. Having the dark shadows where the grout is to go, is not a look I like. I like the same color on the same color look. It makes it look the same, but adds texture. That’s currently my style.

The next morning, I got up ready to grout. I thought this would be a thirty minute task, but ended up being a bit longer. Again, I was being a perfectionist and fixing all the little things. I also did a third of the wall at a time as I wanted to make sure the tile I started with wasn’t too dry before I went back over it for the first wash.

As I explained in my other backsplash post, I made sure my tile around the electrical outlets was cut in enough so that the outlets had tile to rest on and did not need the special spacers.

The normal outlets were raised onto the tile, the huge dryer outlets were not. I did not want to mess with them, since they are foreign to me. The look bugs me, but I will live with it. And now that I edit the photos and look at them, the rough edges really are rough, but thank goodness they are hidden behind the appliances. This is not my typical work, as you can tell, I was just glad to have it done!

Now the washer hookups got no special treatment either. I just tiled right up to them. I also did not caulk around them. I was unsure if the plumber would ever need to take the stuff off and if caulking would prevent it. So I left it alone.

I ended up not going all the way down to the floor. I had enough to go one more row, but not quite enough to go two rows (what I lacked). It ended up being perfect just resting on my newly trimmed dryer vents.

Mister Pfitzer loves to mimic all we do. He was in the laundry room several times offering his help. He was really good at cleaning. I'd spray a spot and he'd scrub it.

The backsplash definitely gives a finished look to the laundry room. The tile is shiny and the light that comes in from the window bounces off the tile and out through the glass door and into the hallway.

And speaking of window, we got plantation shutters installed in the laundry room the day after Christmas. I had lived without it because I thought it didn’t need one. And it doesn’t; but from the outside it looked unfinished. You saw all the other windows with the shutter and this lone window without them. From the inside, it really finishes the room as well.

The laundry room is now the fanciest room in the house. It has a backsplash on both walls, double the washer and dryer, cabinets, sink and a fun color on the ceiling. I definitely enjoy the time I spend in there.