Janiner: Congrats on the new floormate and I agree w Lazygarden's observations. I don't know which one I have, it just says Spin and Scrub on the front. We have had it for about 2 years and I love it, given what it is for and how well it does the difficult task of cleaning tile. We have 1550 square feet of tile (the whole house, including the bedrooms), no pets or kids, and I hate housecleaning, so do as little as possible. But the tile is light, so I still have to do it every 6 weeks or so. The worst is always the kitchen, especially under our restaurant-style thick rubber mat in front of the cooking area. It has lots of holes for things to drop through and can be quite a mess. When we bought the floormate, the sales staff were clear in stating that it was for flooring, but not specifically for grout and that the brushes would only reach the grout if is was very high -close to the height of the tile itself. Our grout is darkish, so it is not much of an issue. Here is a tip for you on a way to pre-clean any really dirty stubborn spots: Go to Sears and pick up a Scumbuster by Black and Decker. This little battery operated hand-held device has rotating scrubbers (and several attachments) that will clean any tile or grout, no matter how bad it is. I love it. For floors, it is still hands and knees (or sit on a low stool or chair, which is what I do). I also use it in the shower, though there is not much to do there, since we don't use bar soap. Back to the floormate, my normal process is to use the stick vac to clean up crumbs and heavier dirt, then the swiffer for dust and to get under things, and then the Scumbuster (only if needed, which is not too often) and lastly the Floormate. While I know the floormate will do dry vac work, I have not found it to be very good at that unless you have a wide open area and not much dirt to get up. I still love this useful device, but am dreaming of the day when we can hire a housecleaning service. We can afford it, but hubby "does not want strangers in the house...." Lynne

In case this thread is still helpful to folks, we used Maipei's newer item: ULTRACOLOR PLUS MAX in Pure White. It comes in two colors (pure white and black). Advertised as brightest white on the market and it is indeed very white! We did a new shower with white subway (daltile artic white) and it looks great with this grout. We used maipei frost color on the marble floor (which looks way lighter than the maipei pamphlet shows) and the two colors and materials look nice together. Good luck grouting everyone!

What if.... I looked at the stone-look vinyl in the store and while it's nice, it's just not what I want. There are other patterns online that the store didn't have though. But what if I did use the wood look vinyl, separated from the real wood floors by a couple of different colored wood transition strips? Oh & get this. We have boxes of old 8x8 tile in the garage, the white marbled stuff that we put down 15 years ago. I've been trying to figure out how to get rid of it, and mentioned putting it on craigslist today. Dh was shocked and thinks we are still going to use it. Um, no. I was thinking GIVE it away. On the FREE CL side. He was shocked, after we spent so much on it. Yes dear, 15 years ago when we were both 25 pounds lighter, everyone wore tracksuits everywhere, and the beastmobile was a gleaming new truck. No. No. No.

Notice that the FAQ on the site does not include information on the volume of water needed to fill the tub! Well, I did the math. Their smallest recommended size is about 65" long, 34" wide and filled about 16" deep for a bath. Note that this is not an impressive shower size. (The one in the ad is probably 60 inches wide.) That is 153 gallons of water. This 2 person air massage tub at 23" deep uses only 2 gallons more. There is a lot of cubic area lost to corners in a square tub. The one below uses 2 gallons less than the smallest recommended size and depth of your "Roman Shower" and it has a depth of 19.5" inches. Note that the woman in the Roman Shower video seems to have only 8" - 10" of water when she leaves the tub. Disabled, elderly, or otherwise less mobile people would have a heck of a time getting out of the "tub" with the Roman Shower, too. There is no heater for it, either. By the time it was deep enough for a bath, the water would have cooled a lot, warming up all the tile and substrate in the Roman Shower with its excess surface area with square corners. It may be a step above the home made sunken roman baths of the 1960s and 1970s, but it is nothing like a comfortable modern bathtub.