Missymoo12 - I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan and went to one granite place my fabricator suggested and walked through and wrote down three kinds. The leathered Steel Gray, the Honed Carrara and something else that I can't even remember. I did not spend much time there at all, probably more time looking at some of the wild ones and snickering at the names. Yes, I am a child. I also called the Steel Gray "Blue Steel" the whole time and made the receptionist laugh a lot. It's a Zoolander quote. Also, they only had about five leathered slabs in the whole place and maybe five honed, they had hundreds of different kinds of stone. I didn't look through the slabs either, just the top one. In retrospect, maybe I should have looked a little more, but it seemed right so I just went with it. I mentioned above, I was getting a migraine and hardly remembered what the slabs looked like the next day. Could you ask your fabricator where they thought you could get leathered or honed? My fabricator hadn't worked with leathered before and the stone yard (Monsma) said it wasn't all that popular yet. I figure I'm in west michigan and so it'll take a while to catch on here. Everyone that visits asks what our counters are, i think because of the matte-ness and texture. I had read about it here on GW and so was interested in seeing it in person. Love at first touch. Lol

Hi, as a retired tiler of 25 years experience I can tell you of three grout discolour problems. Firstly however I observe that there are a number of different types of tile grout out there, and each has to be mixed, applied and cleaned up in its own way. If your tiler is an experienced tradesman he or she will know how to mix and apply the product selected. For instance, conventional portland cement based grouts can me mixed either thick or thin - from tooth paste like consistency to pourable like cream, and can be cleaned up without over concern about how much water you use or whether the clean up water is kept fresh or not. These grouts are probably the most fool proof, but will allow efflorescence to develop over time on say shower walls and floors. Grouts based on an aluminum version of cement must not be mixed too thin, rather like tooth paste, and MUST NOT be cleaned up with lots of water - the dryer the better on the sponge. Two problems I have encountered with these grouts is that if mixed too thin so as to allow troweling on rather than applying with blades and spatulas the resultant grout will be chalky and weak. I also had one job where the grout (a light grey) was patchy on drying. Consultation with the importer threw up a number of suggestions such as contaminated mix water (but why did every batch show strong variation within each batch, rather than a consistent discolouration for each batch) and inadequate mixing (definitely not as I had used the same procedure with a very great number of jobs over many years without this colour variation). Tried using store bought water - same outcome. Dud batch possibility, but the grout colour is a very popular one and the importer had had no other complaints, or so he said. Then took notice of a very stubborn waxy coating on the tiles. This was a Chinese practise to prevent the tiles being damaged in transport and handling. Tile suppliers variously reported problems getting this wax off on completion of the job, but that is another issue. The possibility was that the wax was interfering with the grout, in some way. Provided samples of the "contaminated" grout to three firms who all swore they could find out what the contaminant was, but all subsequently ran for cover and provided no analysis. In the end I cut all the old grout out (130 sq meters of it) and replaced it all with epoxy grout. Problem gone - happy customer - wiser tiler. This brings me to the third type of grout I am familiar with and that is the epoxy grouts. They are two part, need precision in mixing, and must be applied with steel blades rather like say putty. Clean up is with ample water - the more the better. Most tilers hate epoxies because they are considerably more work to apply. They have the virtues however that the colour as applied is the colour you wind up with, and they are waterproof and so will not cooperate with efflorescence and will not harbour moulds or stains. Great for bathrooms and kitchens. Ideal? Not quite. The white version of everyone's epoxy slightly yellows with age, and not uniformly. All other colours seem to be "colour fast". As to your problem I suggest you try one of the paint on epoxy grout colourants. These can work really well but you need a test area to see if it does OK over the old grout. An easy job for a home owner to do - just follow the instructions. The epoxy colourant will also help with efflorescence because it helps close up the porosity in conventional grouts. Failing this the only fix it to remove all the old grout and replace with epoxy grout. That definitely is not a home owner's job. Sorry. Hope it all works out.

Look at the backing on the tile from the factory. If it doesn't got to the complete edge of the tile you will have the black lines. Find 2 tiles out of your material, one that you can see the factory applied backing goes COMPLETELY to the edge and one that the backing doesn't. You can clearly see the difference. Now put those 2 tiles up against any solid color substrate and you can see the difference. The tile that doesn't have the backing run all the way to the edge you will see the black line. The tile that does have it run to the edge will not be as noticeable. The unfortunate thing is you probably will not find more than 5% of your tile that has the full coverage of the backing. It is the nature of the beast . Regardless of white thinset with a white backer and 100% white grout filled, the defect is in the tile . Think of glass in a window, look down it from one edge to the other. You will always see a line just may be different color depending on glass color

We just got our tile! We were also skeptical of ordering from Tile.Expert, but the online reviews and local pricing quotes on tile we really liked convinced us to give them a try. We've been planning far enough ahead on our remodel that a 9-week lead time was workable, and we were excited to have our small but heavy (1,377lbs!) pallet of tile delivered this week; with the freight driver noting that the tile was really well packed compared to some he's seen. The boxes were each tightly strapped to ensure no rattling or movement, then wrapped with a very strong, very thick shrink wrap that kept everything solidly in place, and then all that was strapped down further for it's trip from Italy to the PNW. We unpacked all of it the last two days to find there was not one single broken tile in the shipment, and it was exactly as we'd ordered, at a price well under what we could have gotten locally (we had local tile shop quote on the exact same material, with our designers discount, and it was still significantly higher). We'll try to post some pics once it's all installed in a couple of months:) but wanted to share our experience and recommend the tile.expert folks in the meantime!