Bob's Bloggers
A community of bloggers who live and die to DIY
tile
We Grouted. But We Messed Up.
By Picardy Project on Mar 05, 2012
It's not nearly as bad as it sounds. Well, I shouldn't say that because we're assuming we can buff out my boo boo, but I have high hopes for fixing the problemo.
First up, let's see the grout.
Well, actually, first up, we caulked. Along all the joints between tile and between the tile and wood we used color matched caulking (Bright White)
After we left that alone for a day or two, then we grouted.
And would you look at that, I got Chris to take a picture of me! :)
It didn't take too long to get it all spread out
Then came the process of wiping it all clean. We got those sponges out and cleaned, cleaned, cleaned (in a circular motion and cleaning the sponges very frequently)
We actually like to keep 2 buckets of water handy. The first (the one on the right in the below pic) is the "dirty" bucket, where we first clean the sponge. We get most of the grout off of it and get the sponge mostly clean. Then, we rinse the sponge in the second bucket (the one on the left), the "clean" bucket. Because the sponge has been rinsed in the dirty water first, when we rinse it in the cleaner water it keeps the sponges more clean, and makes for less wiping of the tiles
After lots of cleaning, the tile was gleaming :)
But as we were cleaning we noticed the areas where I was applying the grout there were lots of surface scratches (not very deep, just on the surface)
I would prefer to not take responsibility for this boo boo, but it is clear cut that it happened where I was applying grout and not anywhere Chris was, sooooo....As I said when I was little and spilled my milk, "I didn't do it, the bad guys did it." Someone must have entered our house while we were sleeping and scratched my work areas damnit.
In all seriousness though, it is a little frustrating, but we've done a bunch of research online about how to buff out these surface scratches and so we think we'll be able to reach a good solution. Fingers crossed!
