A wee little water stain has appeared on our living room ceiling lately. A glaring reminder that I needed to regrout our shower. You see, we have this awesome "8 stripper" shower (you'll have to ask Steven about the nickname) and it's completely tiled. It's like a tile tomb. However the grout is as old as the house and our super-awesome inspector (note sarcasm) missed the dreadfully cracked grout in his inspection. We ignored it for a while. Partly because I thought our inspector would have noted it if it were something to worry about and then because I only saw it when I showered. But now with a water stain to remind me that there's something not quite right up there, I found the motivation.
To regrout anything you have to first remove or score the existing grout. My weapon of choice, a Dremel.
With a gnarly grout removing bit on it.
This is what cracking grout looks like. This is generally bad. It means your shower or bath is no longer sealed. Which means the water that is washing you is also washing the inside of your walls.
Die bad grout, die!
When you're removing grout with a Demel the sh*t flies everywhere - wear goggles. I knew my lasik goggles would come in handy eventually. Yeah I had to wear the headlamp b/c our light goes out after a while. I imagine it's because someone surrounded the recessed unit with insulation when they installed it. You're not supposed to do that, they tend to overheat. Maybe I'll take care of that next. One project at a time though...
After working for an hour or so I had the grout removed on the perimeter. I didn't worry about the web of tiles in the middle, the grout there was in fine condition. Oh I also made sure to remove the grout a few inches or so on all the vertical grout lines that touched the perimeter.
Supplies to regrout: Grout (that matches your existing grout), a float and a sponge. BTW, that float sucks. I'm buying a better float next time.
Grouting can be messy. I won't even begin to tell you how to do it or I'll only mess you up beyond repair. If you want to learn how to tile and grout, Google it. There is a plethora of videos and websites that will give you much better directions than I ever could.
After making a mess and then cleaning it up (grout is forgiving) here is the mostly finished product. It is still drying and sometime tomorrow I'll have to wipe the grout haze off. For better or worse, our shower is regrouted (the floor is) and hopefully there will be no more interior wall irrigation. Yeah I ended up grouting the whole thing. We'll see if it sticks to the grout lines that I didn't score.
Yay! Project done(ish)
-Liz
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