What a super job you're doing, You said you painted the front door area yourself. What brand of paint and what color did you use? At our former home, we saw this beautiful chinese red color on a house in an elite neighborhood. Tried to copy it's shutters and front door. I found out the owner's name and called and asked or maybe I wrote to them and asked if they knew the paint brand/paint color they used. The owner said it had been on for a long time but she had saved the can in case they wanted to redo the paint job. I took the information, went to that brand of paint store and had them to mix up the same formula and it was so thin. We always used Duron paints for about 25 yrs. but that wasn't Duron, so I took it to my friendly Duron Paint Store Mgr. and asked her if she could match that color. She asked me if I had added water to the paint, but I hadn't done nothing but stir it and try it on the front door. She worked for way over an hour trying to match that paint and when we paid up, she told me to tell the painter that she had recommended highly to use a black or navy blue primer before applying the red paint. Said red is the hardest color to cover over or blend in. The painter had never used those dark colors before and was skeptical but used a battleship grey instead(what he had in his stock probably)and his employee put 3 coats of the Duron paint on and it still didn't cover. You could see the brush steaks. Finally, I accepted it but wished I had agreed so easily. We kind of ran in similar situation when we painted the front door here a burgundy color.

I would like to add a little bit here, from my experience. If you take a "pancake" of tufa (or ANY mix you choose to use), and slap it on something, like the concrete blocks, it usually falls off. This has been frustrating! However, if you take that pancake, slap it on, and smooth the edges into the block, it seems to grip better. Like spreading peanut butter on. Slap, smooth, slap, smooth. I found this stays up better on a vertical surface. But it is critical not to have too dry or too wet a mix. This you will have to find by trial and error. Kind of like me teaching my daughter my homemade pancake recipe. She always says, "But how do you know the consistency is right?" and I have to say, "You will just have to try and get a feel for it!", since I don't measure anything in the pancake batter, I just add "enough" liquid. Does that make any sense???

Once a bird decides it wants to nest in a certain spot, they come back yearly and don't give up easily. I know this too well ,,, my outdoor patio speakers are currently wrapped in tin foil and the little suckers keep trying! We stopped them last year, but I guess they didn't like their new spot and tried the speakers again 2 weeks ago. Up went the tin foil. They fluttered around the speakers for several days, but seem to have stopped for now. Foil will be staying for a while!

Okay, lets take these one at a time (this is almost as extensive as your FAQ questions!! :-) ) Is 1/8" sufficient to hold or should I just spend a couple hours and scrape out grout in the problem areas? 1/8" is sufficient. However, tapering it off could be a problem. Will that be a problem in color matching? That's the problem. Even if you get it fine in the center of the patch, the edges will lighten considerably, atleast until they flake off. Is there any special enhancer/sealer that will help retain the grout? I believe you're talking about some kind of bonding agent? If someone could invent that where it wouldn't show afterward at the edges, and it wouldn't make a mess of both the tile and grout, they'd be the next Bill Gates!! I mean, liquid latex would make for a great bonding agent, but man would that be a huge mess!! (not to mention changing the color of the grout!) About the only things I could suggest is either he cuts out and patches the low areas, and then if it ends up looking blotchy, he can go over the whole installation with a grout colorant..... or, he can remove all the grout and regrout the floor over again. Those are what I see as his choices. I checked the tile out and found no bad comments about it. Go over to John Bridge's and do a search on Marrazzi tile. As for a solution to the white paint thing, lets wait and see what the manufacturer has to say about it.