Makeover Monday - Grout Cleaning

This week's "To Do"  item on my Breakfast Room Makeover is cleaning the grout in between the floor tiles.

When Dave and I laid the floor tiles, we used a product that you mixed with the grout and was supposed to seal the grout.   It seems to be working with the tiles in the bathroom, but the tiles in the kitchen started showing some serious dirt in the grout.

Here is a picture of the floor tiles under the kitchen table.

I took some close-ups of the stains to better illustrate the problem.  Yuk!

So I did some research on how to clean grout.  I decided to try OxiClean.  I followed the instructions for mixing the oxiclean for grout cleaning.  . . .  4 tablespoons of oxiclean for a gallon of warm water.  The first time I did this, I actually heated the water up on the stove and dissolved the oxiclean into the water, but after that, I just mixed the oxiclean into hot tap water.

I poured the oxiclean mixture onto the grout/tiles and let it sit for 30 minutes.

 
I started using a foam paint brush to apply the oxiclean mixture because it seemed to give me more control over the mixture and didn't waste so much of the mixture on the tiles.

The oxiclean mixture started foaming and bubbling up . . . that's how it works!

The bubbles show that the oxiclean is working!

After the 30 minutes was up, I used a hard bristle brush to scrub the grout.

I cleaned the grout a little bit at a time . . . in 30 minute segments . . . throughout the day.  Zach even pitched in to help me clean the grout. 

Once you scrub the grout with a hard bristle brush, then you mop up the area several times.  It may take 3 or 4 times mopping the floor with clean water to get all the oxiclean solution off the floor. 

Here is the tile/grout in the Breakfast area once we had cleaned the grout with the oxiclean mixture and mopped the floor several times.

The floor is still wet in the picture shown above.  Once the grout dried up, you could really tell a difference.

I took a picture to show the difference between the grout I had cleaned next to the kitchen area where I hadn't yet cleaned the grout.  I think you can really see the difference.

Here is the Breakfast area after I had cleaned the grout and the area was completely dry.

Before . . .

Same spot after . . .

But even though the grout cleaned up to the original color we used . . . I still wasn't happy with the color of the grout.  What to do?  Read about it in Makeover Monday - Grout Refresh with . . .

                             the Ferrell boys and me!

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