Saturday, April 26, 2008

Grouting the Tile

I didn't take any "during" pictures of the grouting, because there is a limited time to work with the grout and I didn't want to mix up any more than necessary. I used a sanded grout with a flexible grout admixture instead of water.

It took only about 20 minutes to push the grout between the tiles, followed by a solid hour of cleaning them of grout haze. There is a very fine haze on them still, which I should be able to remove with a dry towel.

The two rows closest to the wall are mostly made up of the ugliest tiles I had, since they'll be covered by cabinets and appliances.




When doing tile work (or if you're in sales like I am...) a good set of knee-pads is in order. You don't want to crawl around on the floor scrubbing grout without some extra protection. Good sponges and plenty of clean water is in order. I use a two-bucket system. The first bucket is used to get most of the grout off the sponge and the second bucket is to help clean the sponge as much as possible before wiping the tiles.

Sunday night the grout should have dried long enough for me to seal it. After that is done I can put the appliances in place and start on the lower cabinets.




Speaking of the cabinets, I mentioned on an earlier post that I was going to trim the back edge of the upper cabinets to see if I could get the cabinets closer to the ceiling.

The plan worked, and I can put the cabinets within 1/8"-1/4" of the ceiling. I'm not sure if I'm going to do that yet though. I might go back to the original plan of using a trim spacer. I need to stand back and look at the options first before making the final choice.