Whew! Summer is here!

As most of you know, I work in the school system (not a teacher, yet, though). This means that I get summers off! It's very nice in the beginning, and gets gradually more lonely as my husband does not get summers off. To keep myself busy, I do projects. Usually nothing huge, but enough to keep my days short! For example, last summer, I recovered a chair that has been in my family for 4 generations! Yes, I am the 4th generation in my family to own this chair. It needed to be recovered though, or I was sure my husband was going to want to be rid of it. Instead of a southwestern print, it is now a chocolate brown which matches our décor nicely. Downside: the material collects dog hair like a magnet. Last summer, I also painted our bathroom, and refinished a couple of chairs for our kitchen.

This summer, I've started out with staining the grout in the guest bathroom. I will be doing our bathroom too, but the guest bathroom has a smaller amount of tile surrounding the shower, and I wanted to see how easy it was. Turns out, it's definitely a one day project.

To start, I took off all the caulk surrounding the tub. Mistake #1 right there. I had to use a sulfamic acid cleaner to remove any build up on the grout. Would have been much easier if I could have sprayed it down instead of sponge bathing the surround. Will keep the caulk on during this step next time! Next, I began using the stain. Or paint. Or whatever the heck it really is. Um, this stuff: Grout Renew. Okay, here are the pictures.

 The bottle didn't have many directions, so I followed the few that it did state, with a few differences. It states to put a small bead along the grout line. However, the bottle didn't have a tapered top or any way to really do that, so I pretty much painted it. It also said to get the stain off the tile right away, but that tended to remove most of the color as well. I let it dry for a bit, no more than 15 min or so, then went back to where I started on that section and sponged it off with a damp sponge.

Various stages of the process, here.

 

Look! Done! Oh I feel so accomplished now. I was surprised that it took about 4 hours, I was thinking it would take FOR-EV-ER. I guess that is just the pessimist in me. All that is left is for my husband to re-caulk it for me. It takes 72 hours to "cure" or whatever, then I will work on the other bathroom. I have to admit, I am a little worried it's going to run down the walls. I'll keep you updated.