Remove Grout Haze, step by step

Betcha thought our grouting post was the last time we’d talk about installing our tile, eh? We will you’d be incorrect, sir – er, madam? We had a few other less-lively and less-interesting steps once the grout party had wrapped. And since a bunch of folks have asked us to detail the de-hazing and sealing steps… here they are! So stay tuned while I try to make them as interesting as I can. Perhaps I should get my laser pointer.

Anyone who has tiled knows that grout frequently leaves a bit of a hazy film on your tile. We saw it on both the subway tile and the marble floor tile in our old bathroom and this penny tile was no exception. I in fact referenced my own post from 2 years ago to see how I had dealt with it then because although we document everything that we do in posts, we typically forget the details – so it is pleasant to have them in writing to look back on. In case you do not feel like reading it again yourself, in short I simply used some elbow grease to essentially buff the tiles clean in our bathroom. So once again I broke out a clean rag and rubbed the surface of my tile with a little bit of pressure. You can see it working in this angled shot below. See how the left half of the tile is hazy and the right half of the tile is smooth and shiny? That is the part I had buffed. We hear cheesecloth is especially remarkable, but we had fairly good luck with simply a plain white rag.

So yeah, that was a lively task. But it was pleasant to see the tiles start to get some of their sparkle back. And Sherry followed right behind me and scratched any grout that was around the perimeter of the tile off with her thumb to clean up the circles so they looked like full round tiles instead of hazy half-moons. It in fact filed down her nail all the way to the nub (ouch) so her recommendation would be “do not use your nail, because it hurts – but I do not know what else to suggest- anyone have ideas?”

Only it did not truly solve everything. See this close-up below (can you tell this was all going on while we charged ahead on other projects, like hanging the hood?):

Perhaps we had gotten a bit lazier with grout sponging towards the end of the task, but we noticed in a bunch of spots that the tiles were looking especially clouded around the dark outer ring. It was not visible when wet, but it dried like the pic above. See how all the dark rings around the circle are irregular instead of all being exposed and looking clean and round? And although Sherry could scrape it off with a fingernail, since we did not have 10 billion spare hours to do that to each individual tile (and Sherry had ground both of her thumb nails down) I called The Tile Shop to ask their opinion. They confirmed my guess that I should let Haze Remover do the work. No more buffing and scraping every last tile.

I had been hesitant to use this product previously because (1) why break out another chemical if you do not need to and (2) it can damage certain types of tiles. But The Tile Shop folks assured me it’d be simply fine on our penny tile, so I picked up this bottle for $8 and gave it a shot. Here is my result:

Is that remarkable or what? To save you from scrolling back up I will put the before right here for ya again:

There is still a smidge of that hazy ring in some quite quite subtle places, but it is a LARGE improvement. I was also pleasantly surprised by how it brought out more of the tile’s shine. If you look below, you can see my progress line right under the left edge of the hood. See how much shinier it is on the right side of the wall up to that line and how dusty it looks to the left of it?

So yeah, we are truly glad we chose to do the haze remover. Although it was a bit tedious to apply over the whole wall (you in short apply it with a sponge, let it sit for a few minutes, then rinse and dry it off). But it was in fact good practice for the next step: sealing.

The process for applying the sealer is essentially the same (minus the few minutes of wait-time in the middle). The purpose of this step is to seal the grout to protect it from staining (since this is not porous tile in our case, so the penny tile cannot be stained), which is certainly an especially essential step for a kitchen backsplash that is sure to see a lot of action over the years. There is no visible change to the tile/grout after it has been sealed, so sadly I do not have any before and afters to show you. It all looks exactly the same, but now it is protected so rogue spaghetti sauce will not make us shake in our boots. We like that the sealed grout still looks matte, because we like the play of the shiny tile and the matte grout to balance things out. The lack of visible shine on the grout phenomenon also occurred when we sealed our first houses’ bathroom tile and then never had to scrub it once in over a year of use – even before hosting an open house and selling the place! So it is safe to say they we are large believers in sealing tile. Oh but our pointer would be to seal it when it is clean (if you are sealing an existing kitchen or bathroom) since sealing it when it is grimy simply seals in the grime. Haha.

We also had to caulk all of the edges of the tile. In short anywhere that the tile met another surface at an angle, we applied some caulk to assist keep that seam from cracking. This meant where the tile met the counter, where it met the wall in the corner, where it met the cabinet under the microwave, where it met the door frame and… well, you get the idea. We picked up caulk that is colored to exactly match our grout from The Tile Shop (where we purchased our tile and grout). It is so pleasant that they make matching caulk so it all looks seamless.

I likely could’ve snapped more pics of this process, but it was one of those “swift, Clara’s about to wake up and our hands are covered in sticky stuff” tasks. Sherry and I each began on distinct sides of the counter and worked towards the middle (we met behind the sink) and then Sherry stood on the counter to get the crack up to the ceiling (since she can stand on the counter without crouching like I have to). Meanwhile I worked on the doorway and the side of the pantry. So we do not have application pics, but at least I remembered to artfully pose the tube next to the finish product when we were done.

So I think we are now officially done talking about how we installed our tile. Hope this post cleared things up for everyone out there wondering why we did not detail the buffing/de-hazing/sealing/caulking steps. We now return to our regularly scheduled, non-tile-related programming.