gramma nancy

I have seen a youtube video on a product by Mapie called Grout Refresh. It seems to be sort of a paint that you can use on tile grout to make it look brand new. Any experience with this? My grout is terribly ugly and I don't know how to clean it. Help!

Thank you for any help you can offer.

Rose_P

I sure hope someone comes up with an answer. We have the same problem. The house has a lot of tile floor and the builder used white grout and no sealer, as far as we can tell. The grout absorbs dirt and is almost uniformly brown now except at the edges where people don't walk. Nothing removes the stain except (I've heard) toilet bowl cleaner with bleach. But who wants to spread that around? The fumes might be toxic used on this scale, and it probably would eat up the grout eventually. I'm not even sure it would be cheaper than a product designed for this purpose.

I will say that many years ago we had a similar problem and I just painted the grout with interior latex paint. If the tile is not porous, you can just slap it on and it sticks to the grout but rubs off the tile, as long as you don't wait too long. This works pretty well if the grout is lower than the tile (usually the case) and you don't have a dog with claws that scratch the paint off here and there. I just kept a jar of it around and touched up as needed. It was a pretty satisfactory solution that was within our budget during the time that we had three kids in college. It held up for years, other than the dog claw problem.

Rose_P

Okay, now I'm back after watching this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AThK6sHH3DE I'm definitely going to look into this, and want to thank you for calling it to my attention! There was a product for this purpose that I looked into before, but it wasn't water based and seemed a lot messier to use. This process looks virtually identical to what I did with the paint before. I'm not as young as I was then and will probably have to hire someone to do the work. I definitely don't want DH to do it because h has enough problems with his knees without crawling around on a hard floor.

JENNR8R

Here is an interesting article that tested ten homemade grout cleaners: https://brendid.com/ultimate-guide-t...rout-and-tile/

The following recipe was her favorite:

Mix together 1/2 cup of baking soda, 1/4 cup of hydrogen peroxide, and 1 tsp dish soap. Apply cleaning mixture onto grout, wait 5-10 minutes, scrub and rinse.

Bob Vila recommends the same mixture: https://www.bobvila.com/articles/hom...grout-cleaner/

A grout brush with a handle will keep you off of your knees when scrubbing. It would make the job easier when cleaning a large area: https://smile.amazon.com/Grout-Brush...ct_top?ie=UTF8

Rose_P

Thanks, JENNR8R. That looks good and has the extra benefits of being inexpensive and non-toxic. I might be up to doing a few square feet a day, and by the time I finish the whole downstairs, the area I started with will probably be ready for the next round. I think I'll probably go with the Grout Refresh because getting a darker color would be a more permanent solution. However, it would be a good idea to get the grout as clean as possible before starting that process, so the baking soda and peroxide formula will be good for that.

cashs_mom

I don't know if this is the same thing someone had put on the grout in our shower before we bought this house, but it was awful. It looked great when we bought the house but a year or so later, it was peeling off in long strips! We finally just had the whole shower re-tiled.

janiebakes

There is a latex grout additive that will keep mildew from growing. You never have to seal the grout either. When we were getting our bathroom redone I asked the builder to use that in the shower. He said it was alot more expensive than plain grout. Turns out it cost forty dollars to do the whole shower. Plain grout would have cost four dollars. So thirty six bucks to never see mold or have to seal grout? Priceless!

Stitchnripper

I cleaned my grout with a Magic eraser. I was surprised how easy it was. I am able to get down on the floor. The problem is unless I wash each tile separately there is cleaning solution that stays on the grout.

Claire123

There is a product that was recommended to me called Stain Master. It's available on Amazon. It's supposed to be great for grout and get it sparkling white. I haven't tried it yet but am going to.

JENNR8R

I tried the the baking soda/peroxide/Dawn mixture, and it was a nightmare getting the baking soda rinsed off. Instead, I put the peroxide in a spray bottle with a teaspoon of Dawn. I waited five minutes and scrubbed it off. That worked just as well, and it was easy to rinse off.