How To Grout Wall Tile (Shower)

hi I'm Shannon from house improvements calm and in my video today I want to show you how to grout this wall tile in this case as a shower wall tiles are all installed and basically I'm ready to go I've actually grouted a good majority of this I just got the center area to do for the video just a couple of couple things to talk about one thing that you're gonna want to do is go around before you start grouting and go to all your throat lines and check for any more that's squeezed through and make sure that you can clean it with some sort of tool like this or whatever and if it's if it's that's close to the surface here you don't want that because it might show through on your grout so you just take one of these tools go in your grout lines and basically sort of sand it down with this so you just move her along there and then go around and and vacuum all your grout lines out to say that you don't have any of that dust in there and it's a good idea depending on tile you have if you have mosaic if you need something pretty thin usually this is just a real cheap one but it always works real good on mosaics you can get into these little little spots here and clean out any of those chunks that are in there I think I pretty much got all this earlier today when I did the rest but okay so that's one of the first things you want to do is just go through your all your grout lines and you don't clean them out really well and give it a vacuum just get rid of that one before I forget about it okay so that's kind of your first step then as far as other things that you're gonna need if you can see down here I've got I've always got two small pails each with their own sponge and one pail I use for all the first courses are cleaning so it's always going to be pretty dirty and that sort of thing and that last one is my clean where I'll go back after and give it a kind of its final wipe to get rid of any residue that was left on the tiles so I always keep them separate so that's why I've got two different colors so I don't get mixed up too so I always have one that's always got really dirty water in it and one that's as clean as can be so and don't mix your sponges up either as well as that just to speed up the process because I always do this by myself I'll have a 5-gallon pail of clean water as well and then I'll have another five-gallon pail that I'm dumping the dirty water into because it's important this water is going to get dirty quite quickly so you're always wanting to kind of replenish that otherwise you're just squeegeeing the mess around on the tile and you're not really cleaning okay so you're always cleaning water when I did the rest of this shower which would have been 3/4 of it I probably change that water I don't 5 or 6 times at least so okay so you got two sponges four buckets essentially you don't need big buckets for these guys but just the bigger ones for your your dirty water in your clean water you're going to need a a grout float this one's well used in fact this morning I think I kind of broke this end it has a little more flexible than it used to be you need a grow sponge of some kind or float to me and then you're gonna need your grout and just first off nobody sponsored us to do this video and you know if you watch our channel a lot we don't generally show name brands or anything like that but there's there's times where there's products that I know one I really trust and I just want to say that this this grout here is something I use all the time I don't even look at any other ground any other kinds you can buy grow it in a bag and mix it with the water and blah blah blah this is already mixed you don't even have to stir it in the in the bucket once you open it it's all ready to go I've never had any failures with this it doesn't need to be sealed after it's stain resistant mold resistant it's perfect for showers you wouldn't want to use it probably in a steam room or who will or anything like that but for sure anything like you know tile or backsplash or whatever that's absolutely a must and it's got good it's got a little bit of flexibility to what I find most times in a shower or anywhere when you have grow it in a corner like this an inside corner most times over time that grow it's gonna crack because you get some different movement in the two different services I've never seen this stuff crack I just haven't I've never had any callbacks on it I've never had it crack on my own products in my home so it does it just has that little bit of flexibility and it allows for some minor movement so anyways enough of that so it's it's a map a product flex color CQ and that's all I'm gonna say like I said they didn't sponsor us or anything but this is completely what I use I would recommend using so on our wall we've got a couple different tiles so we've got the mosaic up top and then we've got the 12 by 24s down here and so I'm gonna be able to you know kind of show you both styles of tile plus working around this metal edge this is one grouted here I don't want the video it's probably hard to tell what's grouted and what isn't but so I'm going to kind of go through all that and give you a good idea of what you're up against if I would have shown grouting this whole bathroom it would have been just a long boring video and really I can show you all that same stuff right in this spot so so open your grow it up I usually take the lid right off it's just easier to deal with it'll be a piece of plastic for this brand and taut on the top and when you're done with it just flatten it back down and put that plastic in there as nice as you can to kind of seal the top up and this stuff will keep for more than a year if it's sealed down really well in case you have another project coming up okay so basically I'm pretty much ready to start I don't think there's anything else I can really tell you so I'm just going to use my my trowel oh and of course I've got the tub protect I don't know if you can actually see in the bottom of the tub but there's a bunch of garbage like this like grow that drop down and it's in the tub but there's a plastic film on the tub yet too so but I'm still being careful not to mash it into that because it might still scratch the tub so as you can probably guess grouting on a wall as a little more difficult than grouting on the floor you're fighting gravity the whole time so you're you're definitely going to drop some stuff on the on the edge and I kind of go around I'll use some of that stuff but for the most part if it gets contaminated with some dirt or drive chunks I don't use it so that's just part of the nature of the beast you're gonna you're gonna lose some okay so you just go in your bucket and I I don't get too much on the wall at a time because like I said you just you can't keep it up there if you get too big of the mount so you kind of find what works for you start off with a small area the other thing with this groats is it starts to set up and dry and cure pretty quickly so you can't I never do a very big area like honestly I'll probably do like this is where the girl stops here and over here again I think what I'll do to start with is I'm just gonna do this border and maybe down here a little ways and that'll be it and then I'll wipe typically if you're working with this kind of tile like I might do about four or five six square feet at a time and once you get a feel for how much time you have you can figure out you know how far to go before you start washing it down because it will start sticking it just ends up being a lot of work to get it off if you've got a really shiny tile you'll get a bit of a cloudy film on there too and that's why it's important to have the clean water to keep that cleaned up so okay so I just get some on your trowel and depending where you're kind of working on the wall just take it up to the wall and kind of work it in work it into the joints you want to make sure you're forcing forcing it in there you're not just superficially covering the the growth joint not actually pushing it back in there you know good eighth to a quarter inch you want to fill that grout that that line that's there just kind of work keep working it along and it's usually better if you can kind of work it a little bit of an angle so that you're the edge of your trope doesn't fall right into every little groove and dish it out so if you're working on a little bit of an angle you can usually keep it floated pretty pretty level to the top and you can see I'm dropping a little bit some pieces and I've got a bit of a large grout line right there so it takes a little more this grout here you can do up to half-inch joints with it so I think I think sixteenth inch to half inch actually if I remember right basically I've got eighth inch joints for the main body of the tile here and these are just a little smaller in this mosaic they're somewhere close to sixteenth of an inch probably so you can see I'm just pushing it in there and I'm trying to clean off as much access as I can as I go if I if I was to leave it like that I'm wasting a lot of grow plus it's just gonna take that much more work to clean it up so I'm just methodically kind of working my way along here making sure I get everything filled in and don't miss a spot periodically just look back the way you did because sometimes you'll trap a big bunch air in there mmm you end up with a little bubble and it'll pop and all sudden you have a void there that you didn't realize you'd left behind so again is why it's important to try to force it deep in there as far as you can get it right in there to fill it up that's already trying to set up back there a little bit but it's not gonna be too bad yeah so just finish this off some people some people like to wear gloves rubber gloves when they're doing this this can be a little bit corrosive when your hands are kind of in it and in the water and stuff all you know for three four hours and a day so rubber gloves probably isn't a bad idea other than that I don't really there's no need for a mask or anything I'm just looking back here make sure I got all the all the little areas filled and I just went down here a little bit okay so I'll set that that to the side and pull up my cleaning bucket so now with your sponge you don't want to have much water in it you're gonna want to wring as much water out as you can get it pretty much as dry as you can like that you know it's not dripping or anything that's just down and then you just same as what you did with the the float you're kind of wanting to work diagonally across the across the drove line scrub joints so that you're not dodging them out just kind of get here that wide one at the top is gonna be a little harder to knock gouge out right there it was just stuck on already pretty good so I'm just initially just trying to get the bulk of it off and kind of smoothing over the joints just to kind of feather it out and make it look reasonably well getting the bulk of it off the surface I've got a piece of metal up there chrome trim that goes around the window so if you see me wiping up there I'm just trying to do that so then just go back to your water and rinse your sponge out as well as you can once you've basically wiped that wall once the water coming out of your sponge is gonna be fairly white with with the glue or the adhesive and you probably see the water is already already milky so it doesn't take long but you'll kind of know when you've got it to dirty if you're not going to be cleaning very well and it's just time to change the water oh so this this growth that I use it kind of has a glue rate in it and that's why it's so effective but that glue can dry pretty quickly and leave a bit of a film so the better the more you can get it off initially the better and sometimes when the grow gets a little wetter the color won't look quite right but it'll feel dry and it'll be fine it's another thing about this stuff is it you're not mixing different batches as you go so it's always a nice color match wherever you start and stop once it's cured now glass glass mosaic tiles like this are little Phinney appear when you're trying to get the glue off because it'll kind of haze over and it and it looks bad for a while I think if you look up here on these ones I think they look pretty shiny I didn't wipe them yet but once that's dry I'll just kind of go and buff those little tiles with a just a like a terry cloth or whatever and if there's any little film left on there it usually buff straight off but the more you can get off at this stage the less work you're gonna have back then or at the at the end to clean that up okay so that's that's where I'd kind of stop and I'd move on groped my next area and in the meantime that's kind of drying a little bit more because when you're initially wiping sometimes it's easy to pull it out of those joints there so once it sets up your next cleaning coats or you can be a little more aggressive if you have to be so I'll go down here and do this next area and then we'll go back on top and I just go back and forth back and forth and I work my way through the wall so like I said a shower typical shower this this size you're probably looking at around three hours if you buy yourself to grow it at all and you know get cleaned up and that may be more if you've never done any of it before so same thing for these towels you're just working it into the back into there and you can kind of see on your leading edge you're not going to see it with the camera you can kind of see how far it's working its way in there so it gives you a bit of an idea how much you have to work it I could have used the other end now that I broke that one end of chocolates not quite stiff enough you're just kind of working it in there making sure you're getting as much of the excess off as you can and you usually end up with some on your trowel like that or on your float and you can just work it in there again I usually try to work from top to bottom now I've done a bit of the bottom here already so I'm going a little backwards in this area but if you work from top to bottom then you're kind of cleaning up any little drips and stuff that rolled down the wall as you go so this is where that metal is against the tile I've got a growth joint there so just kind of whatever you can do to work it in there sometimes they take a little more finesse to get it in there nicely just again just want to be sure you're getting it filled up so just kind of go at it whatever angle seems to peel it off best off the trowel off that float I keep calling it a trowel how it fills it the best mix well I got a little spot there okay and I'm gonna wipe this up down here right away so I think I think I got everything there let's connect oh yeah when you're doing inside corners like that like over here usually what I try to do I usually start on my end wall and I'll go rake top to bottom on and wall but I when I'm doing the end I do the inside corners as well actually maybe I can show you here better camera can see a little better you can see here so if I'm doing this wall I'm doing that corner and I'm also doing out both the width of my trowel or whatever kind of works owed onto this wall too so that when I come back and do this wall I'm not trying to rub up against what I've already done and making a mess because those corners can be a little trickier to get it she'll break back in there and get it in there sometimes you're using your finger even to push it in there sometimes that works better than anything so it's no real right or wrong to be honest your finger works better in certain spots that's what I'd use just you don't want to use anything too rigid because you might end up scratching the tile or scratching the metal or anything like that so you can probably kind of hear the little sandy particles on there as like scrubbing these ones are already drying on there pretty good so you can hear it's kind of abrasive as I move as I'm scrubbing and if you've got a spot like over here you know when you've worked around the corner you're coming back into it just take a little extra care where you're merging the two - it's a work together and it'll just blend together and nobody will ever be able to tell where you start and soft metal is kind of the same at like the shiny glass tiles it it easily shows a film so you just got to kind of keep it clean it it will wipe off after - but it's easier if you can have it as clean as possible right from the start just cleaning up what kind of dropped off the wall to the niche there on the niches partly why I didn't show them is because they're kind of a pain in the putt and by the time I get in there and looking in my arms in the way you'd never see what I was doing anyways but you know there's just a little more work especially this one's down kind of low so you need to get right down there and look and make sure you got all the little corners filled and again another spot where you might be using your finger in there to actually apply it and just whatever it takes to kind of get it in there so you can usually I don't know can you hear that hear that and then over here it's a little more there was just a few grains of the sand stuck to that tile there and you can easily feel it with your hand afterwards so just kind of go around and clean it all up so now that's a couple three times with my dirty walk yeah with my dirty water okay now I've really got the excess grout all off the wall so there's no real dirty excess spots and this is where I'd go to my clean bucket kind of for the final tuneup same thing ring as much for the water out as you can and just go around kind of give everything good wipe rinse your sponge often with this with this pass I rinse my sponge quite a bit and I'll actually use both sides of it so I'm again I'm going to agonal E and I'll kind of do a big area with one side and I'll flip the sponge over make the next pass beside that with the other side rinse it off now depending how dirty your wall is maybe I'll do that a couple times before you actually have to rinse your sponge Oh this is actually pretty clean so just check this metal a little bit there should do it so now you can see see that's getting a little bit cloudy can you pick that up on the camera there's some shiny spots and some cloudy spots that mine are a little bit there will just buff off with the like with a terry cloth or a Terry towel or whatever once once the grout it's all dry give it a couple three four hours before you come back to it and that'll just polish right off of there so really that's that's the basics real basics this like said this grow works really well it's quite user friendly as long as you don't get doing too big of a patch at one time so just start out with a small area and get a feel for it get to know how long it's gonna take and how much work it is to scrub it off if it gets dried on there too too long it it can take a bit of elbow grease so once once the walls kind of dry you can you can look for spots that you missed usually just by feeling around you'll feel a real gritty spot or sandy spot and usually at this stage if you cleaned it this well those spots will just wipe off with your hand with a little bit of a scrub so okay well I think I think that's pretty much it all that's left to do here is let that dry and I'll just polish that glass tile a little bit and that'll be all cleaned up I believe this grout I should really read it usually usually I wouldn't have anybody use the shower for you know till the next day 24 hours basically that'd be my recommendation but just read what it says on the on the camp and same thing if you're using it on the floor so many hours before you should be walking on it too so okay so again hopefully you liked the video and hopefully it taught you what you needed to know about grouting shower wall or grouting any kind of tile wall really and if it did well even if it didn't give us a thumbs up I'd appreciate that and if you have any questions about your project that you might be working on you can come to the forum and post a poster question on the forum if you have a comment about this video posted in the comments I check those over a few days and yeah just appreciate you watching and checking us out and look at our channel because we've got lots of good stuff there Thanks

Channel: HouseImprovements

Views: 42,005

Rating: 4.9225092 out of 5

Keywords: grout, wall, shower, seal, diy, Improvements, how, to, apply, install, tile, ceramic, porclin, bathroom, tub, kitchen, porcelain, bath, room, grouting, mapei, flexcolor, cq, easy, home, improvement, upgrade, replace, reno, renovate, water, proof, house, fix

Id: 7xV-58J8or0

Length: 24min 6sec (1446 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 12 2019