Regrouting Floor and Wall Tiles

Tile on walls and floors sometimes lose grout. We see installations that are many years old that never have lost any grout - and ones done last year that need attention. Installations or construction issues combined with settling are the cause. I recently saw a home built in the 1950's and the tile looked like they were new (they had in fact gone out of style and had come back in) and the install looked as perfect as it must have 60 years ago.

Tiles are attached to the wall or floor (a majority of the time) using thinset. Thinset is a process that uses a special adhesive to attach tile to a substrate such as water resistant wallboard or reinforced backerboard. When hardened, fresh grout is then forced into the spaces between the tiles with a rubber trowel and wiped clean. When the grout fails the danger is water, finding its way to the thinset. This begins the process of releasing the tile from the substrate. Water can gather behind the tile and develop mold. This mold will eventually show back through the grout, and a shower will start to smell swampy. We see these every day. This is the reason it is imperative missing grout (or caulk - we will get to that later) has to be replaced.

Regrouting by a tile installer who probably installed many of the time bombs these situations represent (always check their references with contractors they sub for as well as past customers and you will find a great one) usually begins with trying to remove the grout. Often we see a razor blade/utility knife used to score the grout so it will hold the new grout. This process is doomed to failure, as the grout will look good at first, but will be washed away. Much sooner than the homeowner wants it to be.

The tool we use to deeply remove the grout before regrouting is our key advantage. The tools used to remove grout are crucial to doing a professional job. We use the Fein Multimaster to achieve a great result. A gentle oscillation removes the grout (not disturbing the tiles), and we are able to replace the grout in a manner that will last much longer than any method. Dust is kept to a minimum. We started using this method, after seeing the ineffective way grout and caulk is removed in most cases, leading to customer unhappiness when the newly skimmed grout disappears in a matter of months. Ineffective removal techniques include (attempting to score the grout with a utility knife as well as just skimming over the old grout) are only efforts to make sure at least some of what is applied sticks for a little while.

Another important consideration in regrouting is how the edges are treated. Edge and corners must be caulked. Grout begins to shrink as the water evaporates and cracks form. Caulk contains latex or polyester instead of water, and this insures (if applied properly) corners and edges will not form cracks. Your installer may tell you he has used grout in the edges for years and never had a problem. We hear this all the time as we are estimating showers with cracked grout in the corners. I suspect the reason for not caulking are twofold: 1- the trouble one must go to to acquire the caulk that matches the color necessary of the grout 2- the technique of caulking requires patience not everyone has.

The first place we usually start in the regrouting process is to match the existing grout color, since it is only the rare circumstance where we will have to remove all the grout. This can be a problem in some cases, and if necessary we can apply a colorseal to the grout to attain an even look.