Please Help With Grout???????

[baby2000]

Well iam new to the board and just wanted to say HI. A few weeks ago i decided to do it myself and lay down 555 square feet of tile in my living room. It looks great but i still need to do all of the sides and the corners. My question is iam in the process of putting in the grout. I went to home depot and bout premixed stain proff grout that comes a little bucket. Is there anything that will make it easier to put the grout in the around the tile? I am haing a hard time getting it out of the bucket and on to the tile. I know that are some kind of things that look like hand guns that i might be able to use to make the grout go right into the space. Please help Berni.

[pushkins]

First of all I hope you have actually finished "tiling" before you start the grouting ?

The "stainmaster grout" that HD sells probably isn't the best product out there but it's application is much the same as standard grout.
Get yourself a "grouting trowel" it will look much like a normal trowel except it will have a rubber face. Pour a reasonable amount on to the floor and in a sweeping 45 degree motion across the tiled floor work the grout into the joints, moving any excess grout along with the trowel as you go.
Yes you will end up with an amount of grout left on the tile surface, but if you use enough pressure on the trowel as you work it in this amount is relitively small. It will leave what is called among other things "ghosting" or haze, the trick here is to make sure you have a bucket of fresh CLEAN water and a sponge, as the tile surface starts to get a haze wash it off with a well rinsed out and wrung sponge. The less water left trapped in the sponge the easier the cleaning is to do. Depending on how hard you press on the sponge will also guide you to your final grout depth, the harder you push the more grout it will take out. Make sure you clean the sponge in clean water very regulary.

Depending on your skill level and grouting speed you may need to grout some and then go back and clean the earlier grouted area, then return to grouting.

HINT: DO NOT leave too much grout on textured tiles for too long, it will dry and be much more difficult to remove.

Good Luck

[skintdigit]

I agree with pushkins. Buy dry polymer modified grout in bags, mix the stuff with clean water in a small bucket...I like the two gallon buckets I have left over when purchasing primer or paint from a popular home improvement store. You can mix it by hand with a small square edged margin trowel, add just enough water so that the grout is about the consistency of thick cake icing or cold oatmeal. Work the grout into the joints by moving the rubber float at 45 degree angle to the grout lines, holding the float fairly flat to the floor...maybe at a 25 degree angle or so. Once the grout joints are filled, turn the trowel up to 90 degrees from the floor and rake off all the excess you can, still moving the float across the grout lines at an angle. If you haven't done this before, you might best work in small sections, say 4x4 feet at a time. If you get too far ahead of yourself, you'll either wind up with curing grout haze on your tile surface, which requires acid or major elbow grease to remove, or you'll rush cleaning the tile surface by using too much water in your cleanup sponge and the result will be splotchy, uneven grout color. Use kneepads, frequent changes of water in your 5 gal water bucket, and a new smooth hydrophilic grout sponge with rounded corners, wrung as dry as you can wring it after each rinse. And don't forget to polish off the surface of the tile with a soft cloth or cheesecloth an hour or so after your final cleanup on each section.