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Flooring Other Design Dilemma

Grout issues - am I being too picky?

3 years ago

There was an area of my grout that was a bit dirty/dark looking, so I used Zep grout cleaner on it. I followed the instructions word for word, and all it did was make the grout look a bit darker and also dissolve a bit of it. Now the grout level looks a bit low in that area. Should I just leave it alone? The perfectionist in me always has to "fix it" when I screw something up, even when it's extraordinarily minor lol. I dont think I wanna remove the grout and risk chipping the tiles and have an even worse issue.

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Comments (2)

SJ McCarthy
3 years ago
If you are losing grout (which you have done) it means you are too aggressive with your chemicals and/or your scrubbing.

Sanded grout is VERY different from unsanded or epoxy grouts. The crumbling one's are tricky. The Zep will tell you 'for use with any tile'. They are trying to catch your attention to purchase their product.

The GROUT company is the source of information for grout CLEANING. I've seen many of the off-the-shelf cleaners completely DESTROY floors (I'm more in the wood flooring side...but chemistry is chemistry and physics is physics).

Your grout is starting to look a little low. If you want to fix it, you will need to remove ALL the grout (from those tiles or from the entire floor = your choice...but you have to KNOW it will look different = could drive you to do 'more' fixes that could cause more damage). And then regrout your tiles.
John
Original Author
3 years ago
last modified: 3 years ago
Thank you! Several lessons learned here. The instructions on the back of the bottle said to scrub for stubborn stains. I used a toothbrush, but wasn't crazy aggressive. But I did do several rounds of Zep in this one area. That was likely my mistake. Just glad I was careful enough that it didnt harm the tiles or baseboards (I used blue tape).

Maybe I'll have my tile guy just remove the grout from this one area and regroup. I dont mind if the shade of grey (I still have the original bag of grout we used) is a bit different, because my whole floor has very slightly different shades of grey grout throughout.

I can't just put grout on top of it? I know you have to usually remove 2/3 of the grout in the joints for the new grout to cure, but I read somewhere that for sanded grout, if you mist it enough the first few days, it will still be pretty hard in the end.

Or, maybe I'll just leave it alone. It's not that low. Glad I just tested it on this one small area! lol
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