DIY: How to Restore Tile Grout

    16 Comments   

If you’ve been following my blog you’ll know how much I hated my floor tiles. One of my biggest regret was not replacing them before we shifted in. Now, it will be too much of a hassle to get them replaced especially with little Ayden around.

Late last year during my birthday, we did not do anything fancy but spent the entire evening walking in a DIY store at IPC. I’ve forgotten the name of that store but I do know that they are the same row as Brands Outlet because Ayden kept running out of that store into Brands Outlet >_< It was my idea to spend the evening in that DIY store as I wanted to look for a few items for my home improvement project. Yes, I have a home improvement project for 2015. After a decade or so, it’s time to restore our lovely home. 

I bought this:

Grout coating and silicone grout sealer.

Prior to that evening, I do not even know there is such a thing as the word ‘GROUT’. I went into that DIY store and asked the staffs if they have special paint for the lines in between the floor tiles and they went, “Oh grout coater”. I was like, “What?!” The staff then proceeded to hand me those two items. Oh… so those lines are called ‘grout’ -.-

Next question I asked them was, “Can I just purchase the grout coating and not the sealer?” and that guy answered, “if you coat your grout without sealing them, they’ll wash away if you mop your floor”. Oh… so I was forced to purchase both. 

Feeling so determined to beautify my floor, I made Darling take care of Ayden immediately when we got home so I can start working on my floor tiles. This is my floor tiles:

I super dislike the grout from the very beginning. No matter how I clean it, it is still ugly. And then because I hated it so much, I stopped cleaning it, making it even uglier >_<

OK so project restoring grout begins. I squated down to ‘paint’ my tile grout. Fuiyo, I’m amazed at how effortlessly I kept using the word grout in this post. It makes me sound like some DIY expert there doesn’t it? LoL! 

Was it difficult to apply the grout coating? Nah. it was simple, so simple. No sweat at all… 

See! Improvement! It took me a freaking 2 hours to get THAT done! *CRY*

By now I was cursing silently. My back was aching. I can’t lift my head anymore. My shoulder was so darn stiff by now that I started to question myself if I am crazy for starting this project. I gave up and went to bed. After all I need to let it dry for a minimum of 4 hours.

The next day, feeling much better after a good night sleep, I proceeded to wipe the excess grout coat and get started on the silicone grout sealer. For the silicone grout sealer, I have to wipe away excess immediately. After another 2 hours, I got this:

Tah-dah! Not bad right? Quite an improvement compared to my old, ugly grout. It does improve the appearance of my floor tiles I believe. Do you agree with me?

See the BEFORE and AFTER. 

Darling and Ethan said the floor looks so much better now. Of course lah. See lah who has been sweating it out meticulously lining each and every ugly grout -.-

I am very happy now that my floor tiles are finally a little prettier BUT I can’t imagine myself working on the remaining tile grout for the rest of the living room. Oh please, can anybody out there help me? :'(