I now steam clean the floor with a floor sanitizer (I highly recommend the HAAN steam products. Each delectable dish must be investigated, dumped, and dropped, wreaking havoc on my already belabored floors. Skip forward three years to son number two. And yet, the floor kept looking dirtier and dirtier and getting harder and harder to clean. I spent large chunks of my daydreaming time thinking of plush luxurious carpet and shelling out large chunks of my spending money on various gadgets and gizmos claiming to make floor cleaning a snap. I decided that the stripping and polishing could wait-"what difference would it make," thought I? (More on what a HUGE difference it would make later.) I still swept and mopped the floor was clean. Then, I had my son, and I got bored with the floor and overwhelmed with the task of mommy-hood. I did so diligently in the main traffic areas of the house for the first year. Upon reading the directions, I was horrified to find that the polish needed to be completely stripped using ammonia and re-done every three to six months. They used a standard floor polish, of which they left a few bottles ostensibly for our use. It looked great at first glance, but upon closer inspection, we realized they had polished dirt right onto the baseboards and gotten cat hair stuck in the floor. Depending on what kind of seal you’re applicating and wear and tear on the surface, that can be as often or as seldom as you deem fit.The previous owners of our house either did not keep up with floor maintenance or did a shoddy job of refinishing to make the floor all "purtied-up" for potential buyers. How often to apply sealer? It’s up to your best judgment and the instructions on the sealant. My favorite general bit of advice fits the bill here: Hire a professional to do a section of the room and watch what they do, then do that. Polymer based sealants must sometimes be chemically removed which can cause damage, but they can also last much longer when properly applied after laying tile. Wax based sealants are easily removed with hot water and gentle, circular scrubbing with a soft bristle brush. Find out if you have a polymer or wax based sealant. Always test what you plan to do on a small, out of the way area that can easily be hidden or missed before you start. ALERT: Removing sealant can cause permanent damage to grout. It’s all about what you can put into the project. Floor wax can easily be stripped gently from the grout and reapplied, removing embedded dirt without leaving hard to scrape plasticky gunk in the corners of the room. I recommend that if you have time, start treating with floor wax. You’ll probably get a buildup of sealer if you’re not conservative about application, or depending on the sealant you may have issues of trapping old dirt between layers of sealant. This is done in simple steps which you can see on youtube, just search for a grout tutorial for bathroom tile.Īce Laurel: Yes and no. Melissa: The general idea is that you’ll apply grout to a surface then put tile down, spaced apart by plastic Xs, over the surface. Remember to test a small area before you commit! Finally, you must use the same catalyst base in the new grout as the old, so a lye based grout needs a lye based grout overlaid, while a polymer grout needs another polymer grout to bond to. Make sure you use warm water and bleach or soap to remove as much grease and dirt as possible or the grout types may not cohese. You’ll want to remove all the loose chunks and any bits that look like they may soon become loose. So long as that bond is strong, the grout between tiles can be replaced, though you’ll see an obvious color change most likely unless you are really meticulous about scraping out all that grout. Mary: The grout you see between the tiles is less important for the integrity of your tabletop than the grout that holds the tiles against the table. You can treat the grout with any traditional grout seal, no worries. It sounds like your grout is deteriorating visibly and you want to curb that. Stain-proof grouts are water resistant or waterproof, while traditional grouts are bonded with lye. Scott: Grout is grout, but not all grouts are chemically the same. Then again, you can always order stuff like this online, eBay or Amazon, or direct from the company website in many cases. or a large chain general store like Walmart. Irene: I would try some specialty store, such as Home Depot or TruValue. To compensate, heavy silicon caulk is recommended instead for the seal between the grout and fixture, as well as a new wax seal for the toilet or a pipe tune-up for a sink. Nancy: Any time you have a heavier fixture on wood floors, there will be some ‘settling in’ of the appliance which will cause shifting and movement and, yes, cracked grout.
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