DIY First Time Trying Mapei Ultracolor Plus FA Grout – PRODUCT REVIEW - Grouting Shower Tile

hey y'all Carrie here I'm in the mudroom bathroom and today I'm gonna be grouting the shower tile and I'm gonna be using Ultra color plus [Music] all right before we get into the video I want to talk a little bit about the tile that I'm using all right you're getting a little bit of a sneak peek because the grout is already finished here I just wanted to show you that this towel has this printed design on it that makes it look distressed so in the corners and around the edges it's got this dark printed distressing it also has some cracks printed in it and this texture on it so I just wanted to point out this is not grout that you see here it kind of looks like it's a grout smeared on the edge of the tile and that is not what it is if we get up really close you can see the grout is in the grout line where it's supposed to be and this is the printed distressed Edge that is not grout all right now that I have that cleared up let's get into the video so this grout got mixed reviews online a lot of people were saying that it was difficult to work with and it is not something that a do-it-yourselfer should be using so today I'm going to put that to the test so a little bit about this grout this is a calcium illuminate cement grout this is not a Portland cement grout that most people are used to this is supposed to have a lot of advantages over the Portland cement grout such as it's faster setting it dries harder and denser it's more resistant to water and dirt penetration it does not require a sealer you can use it on grout joints from a sixteenth of an inch to three quarters of an inch it's supposed to be color consistent non-shrinking and efflorescence free so according to the reviews the biggest problem that most people had was that it just dried way too fast and it either hardened in the bucket or it dried so fast they couldn't get it wiped off the tile and the other problem was that they had some trouble with color consistency so I did some research and I watched some videos and I read all the reviews on the Lowe's website so the good thing about the Lowe's reviews was not only did I get to read about other people's experiences but also representatives from the maypai company responded to people's reviews and gave them tips so as I'm doing this I'm going to refer to the tips that those Representatives gave as well as the package instructions so let me go over some of these tips all right so here's a summary of some of the tips that the representatives of the company gave the first thing is to follow the instructions exactly and that means weighing and measuring everything the next thing is to let the bag acclimate to the job site for at least 24 hours you also want to dry mix the bags because they say that the polymers and the pigments can settle during shipping and storage so when you start mixing you only want to mix the amount that you can use in about 30 minutes so I'm probably going to be mixing one or two pounds at a time you're going to use a three to one powder to water ratio you want to use clean cold water so as you're applying the grout you want to move quickly the set time is going to be between 10 and 30 minutes they say that temperature and humidity is going to affect this set time it's summer here in North Carolina and it's about 90 degrees and the humidity is through the roof so I'm guessing that my work time is only going to be about 10 minutes so I've got to work really fast so you know it's time to start wiping the grout off when it is set so if you touch it and it doesn't transfer to your finger then it is set but you don't want to wait so long that it sticks to the towel and another important thing for color consistency is that you don't want to introduce too much water during this whole process so that means you're following the mixing directions exactly by measuring when you go to wipe the grout off the towel you're going to wring out your sponge as much as possible to where it's almost dry and then if the grout in your bucket starts to harden you do not want to add more water and rework it all of these things could remove some of the color pigments from the grout and you're not going to get a good consistency so now that we've gone over all those tips and rules and tricks let's keep our fingers crossed and see what I can do all right so I'm getting ready to mix up the grout the technical data sheet for this product says if you're mixing a partial bag to use a three to one ratio by volume and that's a three to one ratio of powder to water so I'm going to be using three scoops of the powder and one of water and I'm going to be using cold refrigerated water get it all right I've been mixing for a few minutes and this just looks too thin for me um the data sheet did say to use the 3-1 ratio but it was just a starting point and you might have to do slight adjustments so I'm going to add just a little bit more powder to this all right so I'm just using that much maybe a quarter of a cup not even that much all right y'all it's still looking too thin yeah um so I'm going to add just a little bit more powder so it's about a third of a cup all right y'all it's mixed up um I think I finally got the consistency that hopefully it's supposed to be um I know this is important to cement grout so it might not look exactly like it I'm hoping this is right before it it was just too runny I mean you know you don't want running down the walls so I think this is gonna work all right y'all as soon as I have the grout mixed up I ran to the shower and I started working immediately I already have my ladder set up and I had my buckets of water and sponges ready to go this grout had a really smooth consistency so it was pretty easy to apply I'm not very fast at applying grout this is only the second shower I have ever tiled so I move kind of slow I was able to get about four rows of the tile grouted before it started setting up and it needed to be wiped off [Music] thank you all right so I just put this on here like three minutes ago and I touch it and it does not come off on my glove you can't see it yet see it doesn't come off of my gloves and so that is ready to wipe so it's taken literally three minutes for the stuff to set up after the grout was set I wiped it down once with a damp sponge to smooth out the grout lines and to get most of the grout off the towel Then I wiped it down a second time with a clean damp sponge to get most of the grout off the towel after I did that second wipe down there was still a little bit of haziness left on the tile but I just kept on going I grouted some more tile thinking I'll just come back and I'll wipe that haze off later as you'll see later in this video I was skipping one very important step in this wipe down process so that caused me a little bit of trouble and I was kind of fighting this Haze for this whole first half of the day a little bit later in the video I'll show you what I was doing wrong and it got much easier and the grout looked much better once I started doing it right foreign [Music] so this was the first batch of stuff I've got it up there I've got it wiped down one time I'm getting ready to go back and wipe it one more time just to get it clean and then I'm going to mix up another batch said to follow the instructions exactly well I was leaving out one important step so on here step number 10 says that after you sponge for a second time to buff to remove any extra Haze so I haven't been doing that so now I finally have it figured out after the second sponging when everything is still wet I take a microfiber cloth and buff everything down and it makes everything look perfect I'm gonna go ahead and use my float and apply the grout like normal so it's only been a few minutes and this stuff is already set so this is warmer now it's in the 80s and this stuff is setting up really fast foreign first wipe down with the damp sponge I've rung it out really well so there's hardly any water in it all right second wipe down this is to get most of the grout off I'm going to use this side of the sponge I'm going to wipe once then I'll use this side and this side and this side that way each time I wipe it's a clean side now I'm gonna go rinse my sponge so I can do that again all right now I'm going to take a microfiber towel and dry everything off all right that's it and that removes any Haze that's on the tile and also any extra water that's sitting on top of the grout I think that little bit of extra water is what made my grout earlier discolor so now that I've used the microfiber the grout looks perfect there's no discoloration it's all pretty and even all right I'm gonna go ahead and show you the grout and then I will tell you my thoughts about it and give you my review all right here's a quick overview all right first let me show you over here where I did it properly this is kind of what you saw in the beginning remember this is not grout this is the distressing printed on the tile that is not grout you can see the crop right here and it looks good there's no discoloration [Music] and I think it turned out pretty good now over here where I was not doing it properly there's a little bit of discoloration you can tell it's just a little bit lighter it almost has like a Milky finish to it and that's because I wasn't wiping the water off with the towel so it's not that bad it's like when you step back like two or three feet you can't even tell you have to get right up on it good to tell but so yeah even where I messed up it looks fine I'm not sure I picked the right color brow for this towel I think I should have picked something darker because when it gets wet it gets darker and it looks a lot better but live and learn all right so what are my thoughts about it do I like it yeah I like it I think it turned out good um do I think do-it-yourselfers can do it um I don't know if I can answer that question for everybody but I'm a do-it-yourselfer and I did it with not much experience this is my fourth time grouting to have a little bit of experience I think the only thing you really need to keep in mind is the set time like mine was setting up in like five minutes so if you did a big section and let it sit for like 20 or 30 minutes then it probably would dry and stick to the towel and ruin it so as long as you're aware of that going into it I think it'll probably be okay mix small batches but you know what fun is a project if there's no chance of absolute utter failure keeps you on your toes so overall I like it it was fairly easy to work with if I had read the instructions properly the first time it would have been even easier yeah the biggest thing was just this that time and some of the reviews people were talking about it's setting up in the bucket before they could use it I did not have that trouble I did mix up small batches so it probably didn't sit in the bucket for any more than like 20 or 30 minutes so I didn't have any issues with that and that's pretty much it so thanks for tagging along on this experiment and thanks for watching

Channel: Country Girl Living

Views: 51,778

Keywords: DIY Grout, Mapei Ultracolor Plus fa, shower tile, product review, first time try

Id: lns6XfK0xzA

Length: 14min 43sec (883 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 18 2022