Grouting & Caulking Tips for a Tub Shower | Mapei FA

spray some index and we're going to use my Anvil caulking tool to remove the excess so I got a nice joint there and then it doesn't even matter that it's going into those growl joints so I think it is going to be a nice way to finish this I think that it's going to work really nicely there is no question doing the caulking before gring really makes a world of difference it looks amazing I'm really happy with the way that works out so now we're going to go ahead and do the tub for our final part of the caulking here and one thing you want to do is make sure that you have a bunch of different options for caulking so one of my favorite is this Anvil caulking tool all right so we're getting in the final stages here here we're going to grout this entire bathroom with one of my favorite grouts this is mé fa and as you can see it's a 10 lb bag I actually got multiple size or multiple bags of this and because I really do recommend if you're going to use this to do smaller quantities and if you get the 10 lb bags you can mix it to the right ratio so that you always have a consistent ratio when you're actually applying the the grout but a couple reasons why I like this number one it's fast setting I can really move on with my proc they basically can grout this whole bathroom probably about in an hour or so and be able to move on with my project so it's fast setting secondly it has a very fine aggregate so it can go down the 16inch grout joints but it also has an aggregate in it so it's not like sanded grout but it has the strength of sanded grout so anything with an aggregate is going to be a stronger grout joint and it's going to last a lot longer so being a fine consistency like that is really nice it's also in my mind easier to clean uh I think anything that's gritty anything that has a lot of sand in it is something that is just going to be a surface that's going to collect soap scum and all types of other things and cause problems for cleaning so having a fine aggregate makes a lot of sense and then thirdly it's it's affordable you know it's not costing a whole Fortune to use this so it makes a lot of sense in a in a bathroom like this it is stain resistant so you don't necessarily have to seal it but I would recommend sealing this as as well um it just it's better especially with the lighter colors you're better off to seal it a couple of days afterwards but we're going to go ahead and show you how to put this in really simple process and I think you'll love it too so a couple of tools that you're going to want to have on hand one it really makes a big difference as having a good grout float this is made is by made by troil as you can see it has kind of like a rubbery uh grip to it it's not like the U you know the cheap pad you get at the box stores having a good grout float really allows you to embed the grout very well another thing is that I never really stray away from is using a good sponge this is an artx sponge these uh you know they really the square edges make it easier to to smooth things out and it really just it really takes out a lot of that grout so I really highly recommend a good grout sponge uh and that's really about it so we just want to measure our water mix it now again this stuff is fast setting so if you're in a hot dry environment this might kick off on you a lot quicker than you want uh usually you get about 20 minutes before you have to remove the excess grow that's why I'm suggesting using smaller amounts and if you were if I I don't think I'm going to be able to do all of these walls it it's a possibility with one bag um but I'm just going one bag at a time but I do recommend you just do the walls first and then do the floor last the reason I say the floor last is because you want to be working over top of a newly grouted floor when you're doing the walls so do one or the other and then you can complete the process uh you know sometimes it might make a lot of sense to grout the floor the night before cover it over and then do the walls that also makes a lot of sense too um but we're going to get as far as we can on this remove it and then mix the second bag uh and and so forth after that so always measure your water and use cold water now if you want this stuff to last even longer like I said if you're in a hot uh dry environment it's going to kick up on you if you have a lot of daylight coming into your bathroom any daylight that hits it is going to create it to set up faster uh and if you want to have better faster or longer pot life of this use very cold water and then you can mix it by hand I recommend mixing by hand uh it'll just give you a lot longer uh scenario now I'm in 70° maybe even like 65° right now it's it's not very it's like a moderate temperature it's not very humid it's not very dry but I'm going to go ahead and mix this with a mixing paddle again if you're in a hot environment I would probably go against mixing it with a drill that just makes it you know basically harden up quicker but in my experience I feel like I'm going to be just fine with mixing it that way and it'll only take about 20 minutes before I can remove it so make sure you measure your water one qu of cold water per bag and it's actually like 1.1 quart so you can add a little bit more water if it's getting too clumpy so it has a really pancake consistency to it okay so I would just recommend just wiping down the surface with a damp sponge this is is going to help Glide the grout over the surface now this is a very smooth tile so it's not going to you don't want you don't want it dripping wet like the worst thing can happen is if you have any water coming out of the joints because it's just going to wash out the joint so this stuff is really sensitive to water once it hard once it sets up then you can you know you don't want to use too much water it's basically the problem so anything that's wet you're going to want to be have a dry out and then really it's just about paying attention to your grout joints and uh just filling them fully I would say don't stress too much about the excess grout on the actual surface just pay attention to whether the the joints are full because this stuff will come off of this tile fairly easy easily but you basically just pack it in 45 degree angle try to remove the grout but your biggest concern is just making sure that they're nice and filled and that you don't have any area that any pin holes or areas that gr's not filled so this is a a slightly off white as you can see this is called honey butter kind of has a little bit of a beige tint to it and I always recommend if you are going to go with a white grout I do recommend epoxy for that because White's going to be the hardest thing to prevent staining and is always a problematic type of color so I always try to recommend to my clients that they use an off-white or a gray something like that but if you were going to go with white go with the epoxy it's going to be your best bet it's going to cost you four times as much as this grout's going to cost but with white it's just something that you don't want to have an issue with kind of like the idea of having this already sealed in the corners I don't have to worry about the keeping the grout out of the corners smart yeah I just somebody recommended it I'm like that's not a bad idea that's way smart because then you don't have to worry about the silicone smearing onto the growl joint you kind of just double to quickly go over it and not have to worry about that silicone smearing how long did it take half the time it normally takes I don't know a couple minutes now at the top joint I am going to be scraping out that grout before I culk tomorrow so don't worry about grout getting into that joint is not a big deal but you do need to caul the tub there's no other way about it like it's not going to it'll just crack and fall out of there eventually okay so again just pay attention to all these joints before we move on make sure they're all filled and again don't even don't worry about the excess on here this it's all going to remove fairly quickly or fairly easily I should say but if you don't have the joint filled then there's not much you can do you're going to have to go over it again if you don't have everything because you know the idea is basically to get this scout flush with the tile so if you see anything dividing right now fill it in so that you can get a nice flush smooth joint so this is definitely a lot easier grout the spread than any of the than epoxy or any of the premixes it just has a more fine consistency to it that makes it easier to embed this it's not as sticky I guess you can say it it really kind of Glides over easily if you're if you're a contractor that's just starting out your 20s something I mean maybe you don't even own a house you own a car which dep depreciates every year to the point where that's worthless so like no one really wants your car you know no one's going to sue you for your car no one wants it uh it's not really necessarily a good asset so if you don't have any assets then you have the ability to take a little bit more of a risk and that's why like you know a lot of people that hire contractors pressure them into having employees that they don't have any liability any of any sort if something goes wrong oh so I'm just saying you know having an employee is kind of like a a legal commitment that you're making like a child kind of no but it is it's a legal commitment that is providing you with a secure way to take care of them and yourself liability wise you know if your employee cuts his finger off you're going to have workers comp to cover that no one's getting sued because they cut their finger off if you hire some guy and you're paying them cash or even a subcontractor you're telling them what time to be there you're providing all the tools you're telling them how to do things you you know like he's not he's not really a subcontractor even if you got him his own insurance that would be better than nothing but like you know it's just not the protection that if you have assets that you you want you want to have that employee protection that's why all the municipalities ask you for your workers's comp and you know how many employees you have like it's every every person's of liability but if you're just starting out you don't have anything to lose and you have the ability to you know not not that it's safe I'm not saying it's safe to do that I'm just saying that you have less to lose you have less to lose and really the contract of an employee is is it doesn't benefit you you're not going to make more money because of it you're no one's going to give you any extra incentive because you have an employee if anything all you're doing is spending more money you're less competitive it's harder to make money with an employee because of all the overhead and ultimately nobody's happy you know you hire a 20-year-old kid for 15 bucks an hour by the time he's done by the end of the week he's getting eight bucks an hour and he's not happy with the amount the money that's coming in but it's costing you a fortune to have them so well tile Cod has a bunch of employees and it must work out yeah at what expense though that's the question yeah time more than likely well and I I do I do believe there's a timing of when it makes sense like you know I am starting to get at the age where it does make sense I can't keep abusing my body to do things I have all this knowledge so if if this was the only Avenue for me to make money then employees does make sense for me I do have assets to protect I do have you know and like I said I I can't do all the work all the time or I don't want to so that that that is where that can makes sense it's just a different level of stress um but you know if you're going to stay in the trades for long enough I mean everyone's going to wear out and you're going to have to if that's the way you're going to make your money you're going to have to just hire people so I think there's a time and place I just think it's basically when you're older when it makes sense to do that because you know once you make that commitment that contract with the government there's no it's hard to turn it off it it doesn't turn off yeah no you're you're committed and even even on an accounting sense when you pick up that employee like you're not getting paid for those in administrative hours that is just extra crap that you got to do so I mean you really have to think about it do I really want to go down this road I mean and it is legitimate way to go it is the most way to protect you the way to protect the worker the way to protect the homeowner is to have an employee it's a legal contract that is providing you know a certain amount of Precedence in the courts with whatever it is whether they get hurt they're not going to sue the homeowner you know you are doing everything legitimately so it does protect everybody but at a very steep cost you're less competitive you're having a harder time competing with others that don't form to that like I'm an independent contractor by myself I don't have to carry workers comp because it's just me and so my prices can be cheaper CU I don't have all that overhead uh and uh there's a lot of people like me and you know I just it's hard to you know you're you're just you're just chasing chasing money that's not that is just temporary it's not like real it's not like it's real profit you you're you're continuously reinvesting into the business you know your employees are you know are temporary very rarely do people just stick around retention really retention is bad yeah all of it so it's just like you know every time that you teach somebody how to do this yeah you got to do it again how much more time is that you know I mean especially when they do it wrong and then how much has it cost you to correct it you know like there was a period of time when that plywood was $90 a sheet like I wouldn't even want like a worker that didn't really know how to use a saw cutting that stuff because I don't want to have to buy another $90 piece of plywood because he screwed up so you have a lot of things that you spend money on that you might not even be really thinking about when you're considering you know going the official route and hiring an employee and and that's one of them just material cost waste things that don't work out right cuz it does cost money to teach people you know and that's not going to be on the client that's going to be on you the contractor who's hiring that person so just be careful making that kind of commitment if you think it employees are going to be the right way to extend your business it's a whole lot of stress and when the downtimes are there it's hard to hold on to everybody you end up having them do things that you could do yourself and make a lot more money but you're giving it to your employees because you need to keep them around and so like you know you can have a good year you can have all these phone calls coming in and then the next 3 months you're barely getting anything and then you know you're just all your profits are beaten eaten away and you're just waiting for the next lottery ticket to help make it all make sense it's a big rat race okay so now we got this all all done now we can just clean up a little bit and then start cleaning the grout so that's going to be that's probably a solid 20 minutes probably so that really that takes out that entire 10 gallon or 10 lb how much s that was uh what 77 plus 54 20 40 112 120 sare ft so that's not bad uh basically 33 seconds almost an eighth I'd say and the tole is thick I mean the tile is a good 3/8 in thick so you have to account for depth too okay so we'll just clean this tubbin and move on here yeah so basically the way that you come kind of look at that at this is you want to be able to touch this and not pull grout off of your finger so I'm I'm still able to pull grout off of here you want it to be almost kind of it's already starting to feel a little bit dry but it's just you want to be able to mold it with your finger and not pull any of the grout out so I still I can still wait another five or 10 minutes even and then we'll test an area that's really usually the best Bel that but when you can start like still touch it you're actually literally pulling it out and it's not dry enough it needs to skin over a little bit more need to be able to just kind of poke it and move it and then then you can really start scrubbing it okay so a damp sponge you don't want to have any water in this thing water is going to be the enemy to this type of grout so just make sure you're ring it out we're going to test an area just to see what this is going to look like so so circular motions and you want to be able to basically to the joint and not pull the groute too far out of the joint now that's where these Square edges on this does wonders so that looks pretty good so I mean I could I could even wait another five minutes and it that could work too but I honestly it's this isn't too bad you just want to avoid pulling any of the grout out of the joint and it looks like I got a piece that leveling clip on that it's annoying so in this initial wash it just pretty much smoothing out the joints now you're going to have to do a final wash after this completely sets up so don't worry about any of the haze that's going to appear on here it's not a real big deal you just want to make sure that your grout joints look nice and smooth so with the hexagon you're going to have all these different angles you kind of have to go around so it's it's kind of a there isn't just one motion it's basically just trying to get each section smooth so all I'm doing is looking at the grout joint itself not worried about what's left on the tile I just want to have some nice even smooth joints you know on a more gritty type of tile that has a lot of texture on it this will take a little bit more effort but since this is all nice and smooth this really makes for an easy grout removal so we have some pin holes fill that in before so you don't have any issues with having to go back no I mean it's not the end of the world going back but you have to do you do have to mix more of the product to do that do have occasional pin holes you got to fill in we're going to check out before we completely let this dry too so we'll move on to the other walls but sometimes they do form from the air bubbles coming out when this still is that's probably pretty we're going to have to let that sit I mean I'm I'm at right at you know I honestly could have let that sit a little bit longer on this wall it would have been a little bit easier not that that was very difficult you just have to be really delicate with the sponge if you get on it too early so I mean you know you get this there's a point where this is like really tough to remove and that's when it completely crystallizes over and then you can't like Smooth The Joint anymore but there's so much time in between that but if I did have like sunlight coming in or if I had a some kind of floor vent blowing on it I mean it can get it could go get ahead of you but very rarely does that happen because you have a good you know even after 20 minutes you still have a 20 minute window to be able to remove it so I probably rushed out a little bit we're going to let these sides sit a little bit longer and I'll show you how much easier it is when it's harden a little bit harder so you can see right here so this is this is a good 25 minutes later so you can see how it's a little bit dry I'm able to kind of press on it and it's not really coming off on my finger so that's kind of what you want it to look like there's some loose spots here so that's like a little that's a little wet there but you know when you start seeing it look like this then you're you can pretty much start to remove it so you can see I just kind of smooth out the joint and doesn't really take much effort most important thing it's not pulling any rout out of the joint so yeah waiting the allotted time I can put a lot more pressure on these joints to smooth them out versus when it's a little too wet you have to be really delicate so I'm able to really kind of put a little bit more pushing motion on it which do kind of help out because in being too delicate you know it can be you can wash out the joint easily with a little too much water now that this is a little bit hardened it has a little bit more resistance but it's nothing to be afraid of it's something that it's always the environment that you're in that kind of changes it's a little bit it's a little cold in here so that's I think that's why it's taking me so long it's a bit if it was a bit warmer in here I think would set up in a normal 15minute time it is worth worth having that leveling system really does make this look nice and these Tils are really they're pretty even I mean it really M there really wasn't much off on them and they're really well made so I'm super happy with the purchase or the the tile that we got here so I tell you what if you get a hexagonal tile that's not even it's an absolute nightmare like I'm saying like the size difference like if you're like an eighth inch off which which our bathroom has that it was horrible like I I basically I had boughten I had purchased 20% more for that bathroom and I would I wasn't able to use them all cuz some of them were really far out of whack and I ended up uh just not having any tile underneath the vanity cuz we ran out that's why it looks like that the van yeah yeah cuz if we I couldn't use them I couldn't use e inch tiles that were off it would throw off the entire pattern like extremely badly so I mean having a good tile with a good distributor makes a world of difference cuz you don't have to really think about it you could just order from there and and know that you're not going to have an insane amount of problems but yeah that stuff I mean that stuff wasn't any cheaper than what this was it just you know just like one box I don't even know what it was I mean I I was fine halfway through the bathroom and then I started getting into these other boxes the tile and they were just an e/ inch bigger and I couldn't do anything about it I was already committed at that point so I don't know what went wrong there but did you end up ordering more no no we just skipped going underneath the vanity because I just couldn't couldn't make it work and we yeah we're already in it I'm not going to order it and hold up the whole job over it so I mean it's under you know the vanity coverage you can't see it but all right so this is already starting to Haze over we're going to let this completely dry you know an hour and a half maybe even two hours later we'll scrub this down and and wipe that haze off the haze is not going to be any big deal at all but we're going to go ahead and do this floor next cuz this is going to take a while these these grout joints are pretty big and the way as cold as it is in here it's just going to take a while for this to set up and on a floor you kind of really want it to set up pretty nicely on a floor because if it's too wet you're just once you all these grout joints are just going to drag the grout out of the joint so it needs to be you know fairly stiff before you can even remove any of the grout all right so another bucket for the floor so really only had 20 lbs worth of grout to do this so that's not too bad okay so floors definitely hog up a lot of product especially these mosaics so just fill this in and let this skin over it's going to take a while for it to dry because these are some fairly big grout joints it's okay that almost took a whole 10 lb bag there don't have a whole lot left that's a lot of grout what's the square footage on the floor uh like the 7 by five 35 square feet all right that's going to take a good solid half hour before I can even get on that okay so that's been a good what 40 minutes you think something like that yeah so it's just now getting to the point that we can start working this in it's amazing how the temperature can really change how well this sets up I mean this is considered a fast setting grout and it's really taking a long time to set up for me here but as long as you can just work it and not pull too much out of the joints and you should be good to go okay so but it's been a couple hours later I just take a little bit of Windex and a scrubby pad and just scrub all this off to get all the haze off so more than likely you're going to end up having Haze still form over and that's when I like to use this deep cleaner made by Uh custom I just use a white scrubby pad and really scrub everything down and this is usually what really gets everything to be completely clean and Haze free so um it is going to take a couple times to get make sure that the haze doesn't form back and if you have a textured tile it's going to even be more important that you scrub everything to be able to remove that Haze all right so there is no question doing the caulking before grouding really makes a world of difference it looks amazing I'm really happy with the way that works out so now we're going to go ahead and do the tub for our final part of the caulking here and one thing you want to do is make sure that you have a bunch of different options for caulking so one of my favorite is this Anvil caulking tool but they do have these accessories that you can purchase that have a whole bunch of different types of size caulking tools essentially so this is going to really help out so it's about testing things making trying to figure out what's going to make the best uh form to fit your tub in your tile so I think we're going to use this number 10 angle piece for this and see how this goes so keep in mind when you're caulking a tub uh it's not like a once andone thing if you don't like the way it's being applied you can simply remove it and just start all over again but the biggest key is making sure that everything is dry if you have any moisture any water sitting on the tub rim or on the tile it's going to be a problem and it's not going to adjoin very well so uh make sure everything is completely dry and then if you have to clean up and and take all the silicone out and and wash it off you're going to have to let it dry and then try again so you do have many multiple choice ways to go about this or many times to be able to do it so we're going to be using the matching silicone I always recommend silicone for the tub Rim it's just going to last a lot longer than any type of acrylic type of uh caulking uh the silicone is just something it's going to be flexible and it's going to last a long time so first thing is is to make sure that you cut the tip uh basically the size of what your joint that you're filling I usually go with about like a 3/16 inch cut on it but try to be as uh consistent as possible when you're actually adhering the silicone I think that's going to do a good job too okay so that worked out pretty well so a couple days later um and actually in my instance I finished the rest of the bathroom and then I'm going to go ahead and put the sealer on the grout I really recommend that for large grout joints like this especially a floor um now this grout is staining resistant and like I said it has a very fine aggregate so it's going to hold up pretty well on its own and technically you really don't have to seal it because it's still going to be really easy to clean it's not it's since it hardens so much it's going to like fight off a lot of stains but it's still a great idea to put some sealer on things especially a floor like this so very simple process literally just roll it on and then buff it off with some microfiber claws so I have a little foam roller here and I'm just going to basically make sure I saturate all of the grout joints with it so just kind of work that in let this sit for 5 to 10 minutes and then remove the excess you can use a brush as well if you want to make sure that they get into those grout joints but yeah as long as you coat everything it'll all come out to be a nice even finish okay so let that soak in and the biggest thing you're looking for here is just that to make sure all the kind of the grou Jo are kind of darkened and that you have plenty of sealer on each one of these joints and then I really I would recommend doing this every 6 months or so I think it's a good idea to to preserve the grout color cuz when you're using regular cleaners and things like that you are going to eventually take off this layer so it's not a bad idea especially on a floor like this you know these are Big grout joints and you don't want to have you know once it's stained in any way then you're going to have a you know you're going to have a problem so we'll let that dry for a little bit wipe it off so 5 minutes later just take some microfiber Claws and you're just basically buffering and removing the excess off the tile it's really that simple and this will dry to its natural color too so the penetrating sealer is not going to darken the grow joints it might look dark right now but once it dries it'll be completely the way that it was for

Channel: Bathroom Remodeling Teacher

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Id: aq-5aEfRGdg

Length: 42min 40sec (2560 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 26 2023