Grouting - The Nitty-Gritty Details

When I specify tile and grout at work, I prefer to have the grout blend into the tile. I do not like accentuating tile using contrasting grout, especially on the floor. I think it looks cheap and like a fast food restaurant floor. Since I started professionally practicing in 2008 I have matched, as closely as possible, my grout selections to my main tile. I think it looks clean and seamless. The only time I am a proponent for contrasting grout is when it is dark gray/black grout with white subway tile. And even then I'm halfway on the fence about it some days.

So that's what we did at the house. We purchased this floor tile because of it's color, pattern, size and price. I bought it through one of my product representatives as it is not available for purchase from big box retailers or small tile shops. We installed it using appropriate mortar and 1/8" spacers.

 

Then I selected the grout color. In case you've never selected grout before there are two types: sanded and unsanded. You use unsanded grout in areas where you have a delicate tile (glass, etc) and sanded in most other installations. I'm not a big fan of installing the sanded grout, because it's grainy and rough during install but does really well once it's cured. Also, there are too many grout manufacturers and each of them has their own color chart of grout. It's kind of ridiculous.

 

 

Once we settled on a manufacturer and the color Delorian Gray, we started laying it on throughout the house and I couldn't have been more thrilled with how it set up.

 

 

 

I cannot recommend matching enough. However, if it isn't almost exactly a match, don't do it. Just like paints and fabrics can be kind of similar and be completely different, that can happen with grout. You don't want your grout to go tan and your tile to read blue, it needs to be as close as possibly, otherwise it'll look like you missed.

 

Matches need to match or don't even bother.

 

With that being said, we did not match our grout color in the kids bathroom on their walls. We used the 1" x 1" glass mosaic tile (that I love) and went with a bright white grout instead.

 

That was just a personal aesthetic choice as well. We did use a grout additive instead of water when doing this part of the tile job though. When you use regular latex grout whether sanded or not you have to seal it. Otherwise it is prone to stains, water absorption and mildew/mold. But when you use epoxy grout, many of those factors go away and sealing is not required. However, epoxy grout is costly and difficult to work with. So over the last few years, grout manufacturers have come up with an additive that you mix your dry grout powder with (instead of water) that allows a standard latex grout to act similar to an epoxy.

 

My wonderful tile rep at Crossville had been given some bottles of this additive to distribute for trial and she passed two of them along to us to use on our project. As I mentioned before our friend Tara grouted this shower and while the installation of the grout was more difficult to install than a typical grout, once she got the hang of it it went quickly. The grout did dry out extremely fast and we were constantly having to add an ounce or two of the additive, remixing it to get it back into a usable form.

 

We've only been using the shower for a month now so I can't report on how its handling stains and mildew yet but it seems to be holding up better than the grout in the shower at our apartment was.  

 

So, the moral of today's story kids is to match your grout, it will look fabulous. And use epoxy if you can, if you can't, request an additive. It should save you some cleaning elbow grease later.

Not All Paints are Created Equal

The big gaping hole in our living room ceiling was covered over Easter Weekend, while we were in Texas. It is so nice to have contractors you trust, to be able to get out of the house/town for two nights and come home to a completed job.

Paul hauled the tub of primer up from the basement and put on the first coat while I worked in the kitchen trying to organize, clean and empty the dishwasher. He realized he was too low on ceiling paint and shot off to Home Depot to pick up some more. But shortly after he left, and I was making the most addictive granola in the entire world, I realized I didn't have any vanilla extract. I shot him a text asking him to swing by the store while he was out.

Instead of making two trips, he looked up Glidden and found out that they sold it at Wal-Mart as well. We like the ceiling paint that goes on pink and dries white. It saves us a lot of re-work while the paint is drying. We used it at our last house, we used it on every ceiling in this house. He grabbed what he needed from Wal-Mart and then came home and started applying the ceiling paint.

The can was slightly different than the first, but they were both Glidden, both white ceiling paint with the pink additive. Surely they were the same thing, right?!

We woke up the next morning and determined pretty quickly they were not the same paint. It's amazing that Glidden goes to the effort to make two different ceiling paints (white with the pink additive). I have to think that is extremely wasteful financially and wasteful of resources. But hey, they didn't ask me and it's not my company.

We should have known better. Not all paints are created equal. Even when you buy the exact same paint from the same store and the same row, there is a good chance that those paints came from different lots and their slightly off. We shouldn't have been so quick to just buy whatever white Glidden ceiling paint they had at Wal-Mart assuming that Glidden couldn't possibly make two types of the exact same thing and sell it to two different stores.

The new ceiling paint was noticeably more tan even though it claimed to be white. So back to Home Depot we went and bought the white we really liked. Slapped up another layer of paint and now it's as if our flood never even happened. Except for the ceiling fan hasn't arrived or been installed yet. We discussed just repainting the entire ceiling in the living room with the new paint. Chances are, no one would have noticied. But when they were next to eachother we both preferred the stark white over the "cream".

Paul took that can of "white" paint down to the basement and even though it is formulated for ceilings threw it up on the basement panelling as a sort of primer.

 

The tiki bar days have ended. While it still needs primer on about 1/3 of the walls and a final paint job, it's already a pretty amazing transformation. At least the paint served a good purpose somewhere. 

Kitchen Backsplash

I'm not ashamed to say it:

I'm on the subway tile train. I get it. I've gotten it for a long time. It's beautiful and clean. It's throwback and yet modern. It's versatile. I get it, I get it, I get it. I just wish everyone else and their dog didn't get it too.

When we renovated our last kitchen we installed subway tile on the backsplash in your standard brick format.

 

I enjoyed the backsplash over the two years we had it. It was easy to clean and it gave a blank slate backdrop to our food, our utensils and the artwork in the room. I was pretty well sold to install it again in this house so I ordered up a few more boxes of tile and then we waited until we were ready to start the process.

 

But days before we were ready to begin install, I started debating the installation method. I had at least five different choices for installation after narrowing it down. Half offset brick, vertical brick (also half offset), stacked bond (straight) and vertical herringbone and 45° herringbone.

 

 

 

We had already decided to tile the entire back wall of the kitchen. I'd even considered for a moment, tiling all of the walls in the kitchen from floor to ceiling. But after some internal, crazy, interior design debate I decided to keep some of the walls painted and only to tile the back wall. Now here's where my dilemma for the installation method came in. The flooring and the waterfall edge of the counter (and the counter material/color) put this kitchen right on the fringe of modern/traditional. The green cabinets also play a huge factor on which side of the line the kitchen falls. I am trying to be real careful to not let the "modernity" of these elements take over. I still want this kitchen to have some traditional flare and the backsplash can really make or break that overall goal.

 

So here was how it started shaking down:

 

Standard Half Offset Brick

Pros:

Classic Appearance (relatively historic, good balance between the modern and the traditional)

Easy Installation

Follows the running bond install we did on our floors

 

Cons:

90% of people who have subway tile install it in this method

Compared to the other choices, it could be considered "boring"

 

 

Vertical Half Offset Brick

Pros:

Different (not seen very often, unless you watch House)

Easy Installation

 

Cons:

80% modern, 20% traditional

Could be too stimulating visually since all the other strong lines run horizontally in this room.

 

 

45° Herringbone

Pros:

I love it

Much more feminine in appearance leading me to see it as more traditional

Visually agreeable (movement but not overwhelmingly so)

Chevron style (which Paul has loved long before the trend hit - it's his love for emergency management)

 

Cons:

More complicated installation (more time, more cuts, more waste, etc.)

Trendy (am I going to look at it 5 years from now and regret it?)

Doesn't follow suit with anything in the house

 

 

Vertical Herringbone

Pros:

Still herringbone pattern

Less complicated to install than 45° option

 

Cons:

70% modern, 30% traditional

Trendy (again with the 5 year plan?)

Doesn't follow suit with anything in the house

 

 

Stacked Bond

Pros:

Easy installation

Straight Lines

Cons:

50% modern, 50% traditional

Probably my least favorite out of the gate

 

 

I surprisingly didn't lose sleep over this decision. Maybe I'm just too tired to lose anymore sleep to things like this. I texted my parents last night with all the options and we played a game of "Help the tired interior designer!". They were absolutely no help, which I have already told them. They had just as many opinions as I did but we couldn't come to a consensus. So I quickly decided to just go with my gut decision. I had the vertical herringbone, the vertical brick and the stacked (straight) install all knocked out pretty quick. They just didn't feel right for what I was trying to accomplish in the room. It was down to the herringbone rotated 45° or the classic brick. 

 

While I would have liked the herringbone, and there may be days I kick myself for not doing it, I don't think I'll ever regret installing the standard brick pattern. So that's what we chose at 9:30 last night. And if we're totally honest with ourselves, the ease of install may have had something to do with it. We wouldn't have made it as far last night as we did if we had been cutting 45° angles. We may also not have been talking to eachother this morning.

 

 

We did the install just like we did at the last house. Paul would throw some mortar up on the wall, I'd start tiling. He'd run up and down the basement stairs cutting, quite exact pieces to fit at the end of the walls, under the cabinets, around the switch and outlets and around the top of the window frame.

 

 

We're halfway done. We have to tile just a few more pieces above this center window, tile over the windows to the right, down the wall to the window bench and over the back door.

 

We also made some more progress on our vent hood. Sunday afternoon Paul put all the structure in the ceiling, we made all the necessary prep to get it up but the two of us couldn't hold it into place and screw it in without some help. So our friend Phil came by to help hold it into place while we all three took turns screwing the 16 tiny screws into place. It's powered and hopefully sometime today will be hooked up to the venting and vented straight out the back of the house, right over that window.

 

Some days we feel so far from completion. And then we have an incredibly productive evening and we're amazed at how far we've come and how close we are to the end.

You guys! We're getting close!

Kitchen Window Casing

The window and door casings in our house are 1" deep, extremely wide and extremely custom. Not only are they mitered joints, they are a combination of 45° and 90° mitered cuts and joints. During the process of de-construction and construction, some frames got removed that wouldn't be reused, some were damaged.

 

This little window and it's casing in our kitchen received major damage during the demolition phase and so we popped off the remainder with plans to reattach casing at the end of the project. But as we were looking at the room and the available trim options to us, we decided to dig out an old door frame from the basement and modify it to fit here instead. That way, all the window casings in this very prominent room would match. The kids bath needs all new casings for doors and windows. Therefore, we'll use something different in that room, but since all the trim in that one room will match, most people won't even notice that we have two types of casings in the house. Except all of you since I just blogged about it.

 

The existing casing we picked up in the basement had a 32.5" opening and this window casing needed to have a 32" opening. We cut the frame down to size (in height) using our miter saw and then cut the frame in half right down the center, removed 1/2" and then broke out our nail gun and pieced it back together.

 

 



It needs some caulk at the joints,  the nail holes filled and a good coat of paint but I can't believe how different the entire room feels now that this one, itsy bitsy window has been trimmed out.

A Quickie

We've been busy. Busy at work. Busy at the house. Busy with school prep. Busy with a toddler. We've been busy. Tired of hearing me complain about how busy we are? Well give me 3-4 more weeks and then I promise I'll lay off a bit. School will be out for the summer, the house WILL be done (as far as our lender is concerned) and we can start working on other projects on our own timeline.

As I mentioned before, we had our plumbing problem fixed.

But since then:

• We went to Texas for Easter weekend.
• We had the ceiling repaired.
• We primed and painted the patched ceiling (more on this later).
• We tiled and grouted the front entry.
• We ordered another ceiling fan to replace the one damaged in the flood.
• We tiled the bonus room.
• We installed the support system in the ceiling for our new island vent hood.
• We repaired a broken step.
• We attached the boards to the top of the window bench and created the beginnings of a provision for the gap at the wall.
• We painted the double oven cabinet where we had to add some unfinished wood supports to hold our oven in place.  
• We primed the metal floor air registers that sit on tile (more about this later).
• I took the 3rd section of the NCIDQ (again).
• Paul took Addison to the zoo while I was at my test.

Today, the electrician is at the house working on his remaining to do items (install sconces, new service line, can lights on the covered porch, etc.).

Our major tasks can really be summed up in four areas:

1. Finish Tile/Grout
2. Finish installing Trim
3. Finish Painting (walls and trim)
4. Clean

It seems easy but the actual list is actually much longer. Going now to work on narrowing down some tasks for tonight!

I promise to try and keep you updated a little better over the next few weeks.