Mastering Tile Grouting: Essential Tips for Kitchens and Bathrooms
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been looking very closely at a case study of the examples to install a kitchen tile backsplash, step by step. We looked at the cutting, centering and layout, and motoring and placement of the tile. Today we’re going to look more at the steps related to applying grout, one of the finishing steps. Last week, we looked at the application of the grout, and today we’re going to look at the steps of wiping and cleaning the grout and deglazing.
The picture below shows the placement in setting of the wall tile. You’ll notice that spacers have been used to allow for a particularly selected size of the grout joint. This grout joint size can be increased or decreased, depending on the size of the space are selected and used. However, it’s helpful to know that certain types of wall tile also have integral spacers at the edges which will be concealed by the grout itself, but allow for spacing without the use of a separate spacer material.
After a grout has hardened to the point that it can take a fingerprint when lightly touched but doesn’t stick to the finger, it can be somewhat gently wiped down with a damp sponge. In this particular case, we use this metric or rule of thumb to tell when the grout is ready. If the grout is so hard that it is unaffected by being touched with a finger, then it may also be too hard to properly shape with a sponge.
The sponge application should remove a slight bit of excess grout from the edge of the tile joints, but it should not remove any significant amount of grout. Just the excess around the top. If the grout has already hardened so much that it cannot be molded by touching, then you may have waited too long. If you’ve waited too long then it will be very hard to clean up excess amounts. You may have areas where the tapered edge of the ceramic tile allows a overly flared grout line and that is a problem.
The excess edges of that grout line may chip off in the future which is a maintenance nuisance, and the excessive grout also makes the grout lines look disproportionately large at certain locations which creates a negative overall aesthetic. It just simply will not look like good craftsmanship.
On the other side of this context, if you try to clean the surface of the tile too early, before the grout has sufficiently hardened, it may cause the grout to be wiped away which is equally problematic because the work will be improperly completed. You may have grout lines with recesses which renders the grout virtually ineffective.
The picture below shows a different type of square mosaic tile with a similar, near matching, color tile grout after cleaning of the excess grout from the surface. Tile grout will often dry a little bit later than the wet grout color. To really visualize the color of a grout, once dry, which is generally the most important way to compare the color, you can look at the dry powder grout which will generally be close to the color of the grout in place inside of the lines of the tile joints.
After the initial cleaning with a dampened sponge, a slight dirty looking haze will form and should just be left to remain overnight. The next day, once the grout has hardened sufficiently, the surface can be cleaned again, this time removing any remaining haze to achieve the intended clean finish.
After final cleaning of the grout, normally, it’s important to apply a grout sealer. There are multiple different types of grout sealers. Some grout sealers will penetrate deeply into the porous grout surface and slightly embed into the cementitious matrix of the grout. Some other types of sealers will merely coat the surface of the grout lines. Also, some types of more contemporary grout products will come with an integral sealer and not require an additional application of sealer post installation.
A picture of the subway tile that we originally showed in the earlier stages follows below.
Dupont Kitchen & Bath Can Help
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