Grout, grout, let it all out!

I couldn't resist a reference to 80s music...

With the upstairs bathroom finished and (almost) spotless (we have a mysterious little black ding in our tub...), it was time to work on the main floor shower. It was grimy and moldy and it seemed like we had to scour it with bleach products almost weekly to keep up. Time for a regrout! And time for some more experienced people (mom and dad) to come help!

Not only did they agree to spend the weekend regrouting our shower, but they also came with their own supplies. Here we have buckets, grout, a latex mixer (we learned from the pros doing our upstairs bathroom that it's much better to use an additive than to use water to make the grout), some grout sponges and a float. Also unpictured are the rags and the grout brushes and razors we used to clean the shower out, and a drill bit that turns a drill into a giant mixer (to mix the grout). Once we had all the ingredients, we were ready to go...

The first step involved just cleaning out the shower and scrubbing each grout line. The lines were too close together to really remove the old stuff, so we only removed the parts that were loose or particularly resistant to cleaner. No before pictures--but I'm sure it doesn't take much imagination for you to imagine a shower with white tile and moldy brown grout.

I didn't get pictures of mixing the grout either, but it is basically exactly what it sounds like, blending the two ingredients in a giant bucket with a giant mixer attached to the end of the drill. I fired up the camera in time to get the real action--grouting itself.

It took practice and the three of us (mom, me, and D) all took turns, with mom coaching us through. We learned that it is worth the money to buy an expensive float, because it was made of a nice firm rubber instead of the cruddy cheap spongy ones. It's only a difference of spending, say, $2 vs. $5 and well worth it.

We finally mastered (ok, maybe not mastered) the diagonal motions and the need to keep the float at an angle to the wall to avoid suctioning it to the tiles. One of us grouted while the other rinsed the sponges used to remove the excess grout.

Finally, the wall was done--but messy.

We let it stay that way until the grout set a little, then cleaned the walls and floors up with a shammy cloth to get rid of the excess. Then we let it dry some more--mostly out of laziness than necessity. Now that we aren't using that bathroom, we didn't really feel the need to rush.

When we were ready to finish this project up for good, we got to work on sealing the grout, to make it resist mold. The grout sealer instructions read like instructions for properly applying mustard gas, so I was pretty intimidated. But D--much braver and apparently much more willing to kill brain cells--opened the window wide, took a deep breath and started spraying. We did two coats over a couple days.

In the end, here is the result--a spotless, white shower! Isn't it nice?! Now, granted, it is also mostly untested, since all our toiletries are upstairs and we aren't actually getting it wet regularly to see if it will resist mold. But it sure is pretty!

Stay tuned for one more post about our shower--we made one more improvement to it that I'll talk about next time.