Laundry Room Makeover: Grout, Grout, Let It All Out

...A little Tears For Fears, anyone? Anyway. Last week you saw us demo, purchase an emergency tool, and get our tile set in stone... literally. Now what? Grouting and yes, the final product. Squeee!

Nate found this little gadget of a tool in the tile aisle - A triangular metal head fits between the tiles and, with a little elbow grease, you can rout out all the Thinset that squeezed through. It leaves a nice even surface for the grout to settle into.

 

 Once that was done, time to mix up the grout (it should be the texture of peanut butter - YouTube search for tons of videos). Nate was unavailable *coughGOLFINGcough*, so this part was all me. I set up my 35 square feet with my grout bucket, corner trowel, grout float, and a clean bucket of water with sponges. Ready, set, grout!

I wasn't expecting the mess management to be so intense. Once the grout is swiped on, you wait about 20 minutes or so for it to start to dry. Then it's dunk a sponge, wring it out, get about 3 wipes in... and repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And... You get the picture. It wasn't a great time.

It was good I was alone. But the result? Awesome:

Through the magic of television the blogosphere, we'll skip ahead 24 hours to the grout being dry and the trim being back on and the room ready to be caulked. The plan is that the baseboard and trim will eventually be painted white (along with all the rest of it in the house - BIG project), so white paintable and waterproof caulk up top, and grout-matching caulk along the tile-baseboard meeting line.

What's that I spy? The bottom of a washer and dryer IN THE ROOM?

 ......Ready??? Ta da!

Looking toward the garage.

Looking in from the garage.

 Seriously, we could not be  happier. I may have actually petted the floor a few times. It's an unbelievable improvement... Wouldn't you agree?

Here's what we used:

Tools:
Corner Trowel
Notched Trowel
Grout Float
Tile Cutter (which would have worked had our tiles been smaller... so we hear.)
Wet Saw
Mixer Drill Attachment
Triangle Head Thinset Reamer Thingy

Materials:
Tiles (2 boxes and a few singles)
Thinset (white)
Grout (#145 Light Smoke)
White Paintable Waterproof Caulk
#145 Light Smoke Caulk

Had we already owned the tools, the project would have been relatively cheap - Around $100. Since we didn't, well... It was significantly more. But we already have plans to use our leftovers on our family room hearth, and the future will bring tile work in the guest bath and hopefully the kitchen. We'll be getting our money's worth!

But for now, I think I'll go sit in the laundry room and pet the floor for a while.


For the whole story, see day one and day two of this makeover.