Phew! Tile is Finished

Wow, I thought installing tile was difficult. Grouting with two-part epoxy grout was even harder.

Thankfully, I asked my Dad to come and help with this part. If I had tried to take this on myself, I'm 100% positive it would have been an irreversible disaster. My first order of business was to clean the tile off as much as possible. There were still a few clumps of thinset stuck to the tiles and I didn't want those to get mixed in with the grout and discolor it or possibly compromise the water tight seal. After that, we decided we should go to Home Depot and pick up a couple items for the cleanup and hopefully find someone who had any tips of tricks for us installing this type of epoxy grout. We only accomplished the first part unfortunately. We couldn't find anyone at HD who'd used this product...of course.

So, we came back and watched YouTube! Not just any 'ole videos on YouTube though, we found an official installation video from the grout's manufacturer and watched it. We felt ready to have a go at it after that, sort of. We mixed up and used only one bucket at a time which proved to be about the only way it would work. The epoxy in this grout starts to set a lot faster than your typical grout. We had about 20-30 minutes of time where the grout was easy to work with and after that it'd get really sticky and would pull itself out of the grout lines if you weren't careful with the float. On top of that, you can't let this stuff sit on the face of the tile for too long otherwise it'd dry and become really tough to wipe clean. Since we were on a tight schedule and couldn't really take a break fatigue started becoming a problem, so Dad and I had to tag team on installing the grout and wiping down the tile. I'm not sure one thing was easier than the other, but it seemed to help.

After what seemed like 12 hours but was actually about 4 hours of grouting and simultaneously cleaning, we finished grouting the shower walls. By that time it was 3:30pm and we hadn't eaten lunch yet. We decided it was break time and asked Cass to run out and get a couple more buckets of the grout and some mineral spirits to help with cleaning up the excess grout that fell off the walls onto the shower floor before we could grout the floor. After our MUCH needed break, we got back to work and cleaned the shower floor as mentioned above and proceeded with grouting the floor. This, thankfully, proved to be much simpler than the shower walls though we still faced the same challenges with the grout setting quickly, getting sticky, and having to clean it up as we worked.

We finally finished with everything somewhere around 6ish, and it felt so good to be done that even as I write this, I'm breathing a sigh of relief just thinking about it. Afterward I almost felt sick from all the hard work. It felt to me like we'd taken the same amount of work I put into the tile of over the four day memorial weekend and condensed it into 8 hours. O_O I think that all that extra effort using epoxy grout will pay off though since we won't even have to seal it.

Many many thanks to my Dad for helping me out with this (and to Mom for lending him to me). There's no way I would have been so ambitious in our tile design if I didn't have every confidence that you'd help me accomplish this! We truly have something to be proud of because of your help. :-)

Check it out!








FYI, this isn't my last post about the bathroom remodel. We're not done, yet. :-( I still have finish work to do on the room itself like drywall mudding and painting, installing the shower door, bathroom light, and new toilet amongst a few other things, but let's be honest. The tile is really the main feature, right?!?! ;-) And it was the hardest part so I feel a real sense of accomplishment about it.