🍒 Mapei Ultracolor Plus Grout (FULL REVIEW)➔ How to Apply + Tips - Watch Me Actually Grout a Shower!

[Music] all right welcome to my channel and to this video i know why you're here you want to know if this ultra color plus from mapai or mapei or however you say it works uh a lot of online reviews out there saying this stuff is fast drying which it is but it basically turns into a block of cement after five minutes rendering it completely useless and a waste of your money so we're gonna put this stuff to the test i will show you a little bit about how to apply it in a reasonable way and some conditions that you want to create to help the process go a little better and we're also ultimately going to be deciding hey is this stuff worth it or should you stick with something like cara color or something else now here are the instructions i'll pop a link down in the description below if you want to read those in more detail or if you're interested in actually purchasing this i got it actually at lowe's but it's available online at amazon for example and i made another video on the testing of the color to make sure that once it's dried it matches the color label on the bag so you can search for that in my channel and check that video out if you are interested but definitely you want to make a small batch here this is what you're looking at to test it first to make sure before you invest a lot of time and potentially create a disaster situation of it drying in a different color um you want to make sure you test it and make sure your testing conditions match your actual application conditions right in this video we'll be applying it to an alkyl alcove shower that basically a project that i'm have recently undertaken and i'm going to make sure the temperature at testing is pretty darn close to what the temperature is during application like i said so if i test it at 70 degrees when i apply it in my bathroom in my shower i'm going to make sure the ambient temperature is about 70 degrees and overall i am happy with the color it dried long story short here the testing it dried the color that i wanted it to and i even sealed it and it's a perfect match so i know that this is the stuff that i want to go with here is a look at the shower the tiling is up and i'm ready to grout so you're going to go along with me and grout we're not going to do obviously the entire project i'll fast forward and skip around and stuff but first thing we're going to want to do is get your spacers out of there if you still have spacers in there and if you have any dried thinset left over from your tiling make sure that is cleaned up obviously the smart person wipes this stuff off when it's still wet however the smarter person or less smart however you want to put it uses a wet cloth and just kind of rubs that off even if it's days dry it should rub off reasonably well use a straight edge razor blade or a utility knife there to kind of go along and get rid of some of those it's not super fun if you have you know lots of thinset left over in there but a really important part of the step you have to make sure none of that thinset is sticking out because when you grout you're going to see little white pieces or gray pieces of cement thinset protruding from your grout line you don't want that and then of course run your shopvac or vacuum cleaner through those to get up all that dust that's going to affect the seal or the bond of your grout in those spaces and don't forget to adequately protect your shower base or whatever your floor situation might be and we're gonna need a sponge a brand new sponge don't use a crappy old one a float and a little scrubber it's got a soft abrasive on the end of it to help help get some of that haze off later and here is the grout again i'll pop links down below in the description for all this stuff that you might need to pick up now i opted for the 10 pound bag as opposed to the 25 pound bag uh i'm doing an alcove 60 inch by 36 inch deep uh shower and 12 and 12 inch by 24 inch tiles with approximately 1 8 inch gap so a 10 pound bag is plenty more than enough for the singular job now in terms of mixing this stuff you can see here i'm writing down a formula um the instructions happen to call 1 to 1.1 quarts of water for a 10 pound bag now i'm not interested in mixing the entire bag at one time i like to work especially with this stuff being claimed as you know fast setting i don't want to mix the whole bag especially this is the first time i've used this stuff i want to work with small batches and so i'm just calculating for all those viewers out there who might be interested in this specific calculation a more controlled approach here is basically the ratio of water to cement mix or grout so you could add it you know just like this however i'm more of a texture kind of guy when i work with grout i have grouted and also you know thinset similar approach to that in terms of consistency you want it to basically look like peanut butter and feel like peanut butter i like to apply the grout first or put the grout in first and then add water because if you do the opposite you might be in a situation where you put in too much water and then you might not have enough grout right you'll find that it takes just a little bit of water obviously less water to powder ratio right a little bit of water will actually make the consistency that you want and so you can really control it by adding the powder first start with a couple of cups a couple of big scoops and then add water and i didn't really pay attention to how much water went in there because again i'm i'm looking at it and i'm looking at texture and i'll poke my finger down there and feel for the texture so you'll get a couple shots later in the video of what the texture in my opinion should look and feel like you don't want it to be too watery that will create a different color when it dries and also affect the strength but you want it to like i said kind of be like peanut butter so the instructions tell you how long you should mix it for i mix it for a good two or three minutes with my heavy duty mixer and then you can take your float and just kind of feel what it what it looks like and what it so that's like a pretty good consistency i would say you want it to slide it shouldn't be clumpy at all but it shouldn't fall off your float all right so i'm going to start in an inconspicuous or less conspicuous area of the shower in other words when you first come in it'll be kind of the back left as opposed to the first thing you see i wanted to start there in case i mess things up you know this stuff indeed dries rapidly fast and i'm stuck with grout that's like caked onto the tile or something i don't really know what to expect i'm taking a risk here now here's the deal with this stuff this stuff got a lot of bad reviews online turning to cement so quickly and unusable but i found with my ambient temperature in my house set at around 70 degrees that means my thermostat was at about 65 maybe 64. so i turned down the heat just a little bit i'm on the second floor of the house doing the shower job so there's a differential temperature differential there of three to four degrees so we're just at i would estimate a little bit below 70 degrees now i understand that you might be in a place like florida or california where or maybe you're working outside where you can't control the temperature um if it's summer if it's hot crank the ac try to drop that temperature as low as possible because i found and the instructions kind of back this up the instructions do say the warmer the temperature or they imply the warmer the temperature the faster the stuff sets i found that working with this stuff even with my small batches i could have made much larger batches at 70 degrees or slightly less than this stuff went on just like other grout did cara color or maybe some other brand in other words a non-rapid setting grout i found this stuff really pleasurable to work with moral the story here and so the rest of the video you're going to see me apply it it's going to go on like regular grout it's going to wipe off like regular grout i think with the temperature being around 70 degrees you don't have to have that panic mode of it's setting too fast do i need to what i mean you obviously if you have two people great one person can follow up and wipe as you're grouting but i don't know if you have to panic i mean yeah you don't want it to sit for too long right you want it to kind of set and i let everything kind of sit for you know a few minutes and then i wiped most of that gray excess stuff off and you'll see me do that here in a second let's fast forward a little bit so you work it in the grout lines or the gaps just like you would any other grout and then you take a wet damp sponge and you wipe it in diagonal strokes you don't want to pull all that grout out right so look at my technique here and i am flipping the sponge over to try to get a clean side of the sponge for each pass or two because i want to try to lift up as much of that excess as possible and i definitely don't want to smear it around all the other nice white parts if i can avoid it of the tile so this is kind of my technique here again just after a couple of minutes this stuff it's not set but it doesn't pull out super easily from the gaps which i really really appreciated and so you know i kind of went a few lines like this at a time and then i just kind of let it sit for a little bit so maybe five more minutes while i worked on continued on to the next grout line so that was after five minutes this stuff is still creamy peanut butter like it's not hardening at all and again i attribute that to the ambient temperature that i'm working in so close up first person view here of the application if you've not applied grout before you definitely want to check out the stroke technique there and you want to kind of force it in to the gap and then kind of wipe and make your float angle out a little bit just like that so you kind of push it in there and then diagonally swipe as my preferred and you you should kind of you can kind of look to the left there you know and actually see it kind of go into the gap right in the unclosed area not unlike you would do with your thumb and you'll find a lot goes a little goes a long way so this was this was a real pleasure to work with it applies really easily i always say that grouting and actually getting the grout into the gaps is the easy part of grouting and kind of the fun part too the more difficult part is the sponge work right getting it all smooth getting all those holes filled making it look professional and finished [Music] and at the same time getting all that haze and all that excess stuff off so i'll show you how to do that shortly but here's an up close look at now this is the rain color i don't know if you saw that earlier it's got a little bit of blue in it and every now and again you'll see a little blue indigo kind of speck that actually smears and wipes indigo and you're like what is this this is wrong this is not don't worry they put a little bit of blue in there it's a rain color and i think it makes it a really beautiful color but you just have to wipe away if you do get some of those blue specks i didn't get any footage of that but in the my whole job i probably saw three blue blue specks so something you know along the mapai brand mixing process um they had some blue whatever blue they put in there didn't blend up all the way so right so here we are i'm working on the other wall as well and i think we're still on the original batch we're getting a little low here but again it's not hardening up at all very very impressed and pleased with this stuff this stuff has superior technology compared to regular grout for reasons i don't fully understand but it's rapid setting you're not you don't have to seal it when it's when it's applied you can if you want and i will because i'm that kind of person i want to overkill it a little bit but you don't have to as stated on the instructions so that's nice and it works in 1 16 inch gap gaps in your tile all the way up to i think they say a three quarters of an inch or a half an inch or something ridiculous like that so um could be sanded or or kind of unstanded that notion goes out the window when you're dealing with this stuff which is why part of the allure of you know wanting to buy this stuff despite it being quote rapid setting so just some more views here of the application with my sponge i'm just trying to work it get it to that nice clean finished look and again it doesn't thick hardly even thicken up at all for me or harden up at all so again it was just great my my blood pressure went down considerably once i realized hey this stuff is not it's not setting um in five minutes right obviously there might be some situations where you do want a rapid setting that's why you bought it right you have two people you're ready to rock you need foot traffic on it like within three hours or whatever like okay great then make sure your temperature's turned up a little bit but i'm saying if that you know you're a homeowner and you've got a little bit of time and you're kind of doing this by yourself and you can control the temperature then this is how you do it all the way appreciate you journeying along with me if you have not visited this channel before be sure to subscribe i do put out regular do-it-yourself home project videos regular meaning i try to do it weekly depending on life and whatnot and i also do product reviews on tools and lots of other things cool things around the home so again subscribe now here's another technique with the sponge try not to try to keep that sponge on keep a wet side clean side keep it on the tile don't drag it across the tile grout you don't want to smear it there's another look at the consistency that's the end of that first batch and like you like you can see here i've done quite a bit started with that left wall and then that full right wall now move on to the middle wall here and check on my finger got a little bit of haze left over just like other grout would so another little tip if you have a wet washcloth damp keep it clean side and do a couple passes just on the tile be careful not that that paper towel does not hit that grout mark it does harden harden up pretty well but you don't want to if you touch it it'll definitely smear right it shouldn't pull any of the grout out of the gap but um and then you can just throw that paper towel away as opposed to dunking the sponge and getting it wet again and you'll be still be transferring some of that grout back onto the tile so a paper towel actually several paper towels right can actually i think help that check out the vertical technique there again i'm not a pro but grouting's pretty simple and i really like it really fun the sponge work not so much getting up all that haze not so much but the application of the grout is pretty cool if you do have one of these little scrubbers that can help remove some of the haze after you've you know let it sit for 10 or 15 minutes or so again making sure that that edge doesn't hit the grout line and once your grout starts to really harden up then you can be a little more aggressive on the corners or the edges of the tile and try to get some of that haze up i have the advantage of having kind of white tiles so the haze isn't as noticeable but if you touch your finger you can kind of see it well that looks pretty good actually so the idea of course is to get rid of that wipe it with enough with a sponge a clean sponge a wet sponge or a paper towel until that haze is gone now this is the dry you can see it turning a really nice stainless steel or rain color just like the instructions indicate it definitely turns lighter gray so it applies pretty dark like this and then it and that's the testing process right like i knew exactly what color it was going to go on i knew exactly what color it was going to dry now this is the vertical seam in the corner kind of tough to get in there but i found that going at it perpendicularly to the line works really well and you can use your finger of course to kind of work work it in there again you want it to not just cover the surface you want it to get back in there a little bit and then cover the surface if that makes sense so make sure grout pushes back into the seam it's going to help create a nice bond a nice seal i mean water does does kind of grout is not completely waterproof water will get back there that's why a red guard everything or water waterproof i put up a sheet of polyurethane behind your cement backer board right the assumption that that's an entry point for water possibly over time or steam right but you do want to make it thick as thick as possible i think and then you if you are you know i did my horizontal my walls one day and then the next day i came back and did the the corner seams and you can kind of blend it in there now if you have a mosaic backsplash on a shower niche for example a pretty pretty similar process put it on with your float and the extra challenge here is not as much surface tile or tile surface i i should say a lot more grout lines to deal with so you're going to want to let that set you can obviously go at it pretty quickly with a wet sponge to get some of that oh there's some holes there so i go back and fill that in you can get your wet sponge and get rid of that excess as much as possible and again the scrap does not pull up very easily so i appreciate that i've worked with some grout before that you take that sponge and you go the wrong way and it just pulls the whole thing up so so this is kind of what the first pass looks like on a mosaic backsplash just trying to get all that excess stuff off and making sure and i was pretty liberal with my application of the grout on this i wanted to make sure that stuff was pushed in there as far as possible i mean it's the opposite side of the shower head so it's not going to get sprayed on too much but still more importantly you want it to just look nice right now the color of my mosaic backsplash there the the gray it actually that's it's hard to discern is that grout or is it the pattern of the tile but you might not have that problem anyway speed this up here and you can let that set for a good 10 15 20 minutes and then come back and get the rest of it off and you'll notice some streaks or some some water stains as you wipe again use that edge that nice straight edge of a paper towel and just do several passes there again making sure that doesn't hit the grout line and disrupting that grout line that you just put otherwise you have to go back over it with the wet sponge you don't want your sponge to be too wet now just nice and damp if it's pooling that's a problem and i've got these schluter kind of finished edges here these trim edges and i am grouting between the tile and those also and you don't want to let that stuff sit on the schluter trim so get that stuff wiped off pretty quickly and here i am sealing it again the instructions don't say you have to seal it but they do say you can seal it and i'm doing that with a paint brush and i'll do a couple applications tedious long work but it actually goes pretty quickly it's not too not too bad that's in slow-mo so it looks really slow and long but you can move pretty quickly all right and that is it we will stop the video there so overall this grout is not as scary as it seems i highly recommend it actually superior technology and it goes on just like any other grout as long as you keep that temperature down to around 70 degrees or maybe warmer maybe higher test it out first and see what you think thanks so much

Channel: This Better Home

Views: 54,466

Keywords: how to apply mapei ultracolor grout, mapei ultracolor grout review, diy, tutorial, step-by-step, instructions

Id: 2BnuyelZdqg

Length: 23min 8sec (1388 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 13 2021