Bet you thought our grouting post was the last word on installing our tile? Not quite. After the grout seemed to have settled, we still had a few less-glamorous but necessary finishing steps: de-hazing, sealing, and caulking. A lot of readers asked for details on those, so here’s a clear, practical rundown of what we did.
Anyone who’s tiled knows grout can leave a hazy film on tile surfaces. We’d seen it on the subway tile and the marble floor in our old bathroom and this penny tile backsplash was no exception. I actually checked my own previous post from a couple of years ago to remember how I handled it before. The short version: elbow grease. I used a clean rag to buff the tiles, applying a little pressure and working in sections. In the photo below you can see the left half of the tile still hazy while the right half is smooth and shiny after buffing. Cheesecloth apparently works great, but a plain white rag did the trick for us.
Buffing helped restore some of the tile’s sparkle. Sherry followed behind me and used her thumbnail to scrape grout haze from the perimeter of each penny so they looked like full circles instead of half-moons. That method worked, but it wore her nail down pretty far (ouch), so we wouldn’t recommend using a fingernail if you can avoid it.
Despite the buffing, some spots stayed cloudy. In close-up you can see darker irregular rings around the pennies where haze had dried unevenly. It wasn’t noticeable while the tile was wet, but when dry those outer rings looked inconsistent instead of clean and round. Scraping each spot by hand would have been painstaking and time-consuming, so I called The Tile Shop for advice. They recommended a haze remover designed to dissolve the dried grout film.
I’d hesitated to use a chemical at first—if you can avoid it, why not?—and some cleaners can damage certain tile finishes. The Tile Shop confirmed the haze remover was safe for our penny tile, so I bought a bottle for about $8 and applied it per the instructions. The results were dramatic: much of the cloudy ring dissolved and the tiles regained a more uniform shine.
Here’s the before again for comparison:
There’s still a trace of haze in a few very subtle spots, but overall it was a huge improvement. The haze remover also intensified the tile’s shine, which you can see in the shot below—notice how the finished area reflects light more compared to the untouched section.
Applying haze remover across the whole wall was a bit tedious—you usually apply it with a sponge, let it sit briefly, then rinse and dry—but it paid off. The task also prepared us for the next step: sealing the grout.
Sealing is applied similarly to haze remover (without the wait time). Sealer protects grout from stains, which is especially important for a kitchen backsplash that will see splashes and spills. Because our penny tile is not porous, the tile itself wasn’t at risk, but the grout could still stain. Sealing doesn’t change the appearance—there’s no visible before-and-after—so we don’t have dramatic photos for that step. The sealed grout remained matte, which we liked because it provides a pleasant contrast with the shiny tiles. We’ve seen sealed grout stay clean for a long time—our previous house’s bathroom grout stayed fine for over a year without deep scrubbing—so sealing is a step we strongly recommend. One tip: always seal when the grout is clean; sealing over grime only locks it in.
Finally, we caulked all the tile edges where the tile met another surface at an angle to prevent cracks and gaps from forming. That included where the tile met the countertop, the corner wall, the cabinet under the microwave, the door frame, and other seams. We bought color-matched caulk from The Tile Shop so the seams blend in seamlessly with the grout.
We didn’t take many application photos—this stage was one of those quick, messy tasks while Clara was about to wake up and our hands were sticky—so instead we captured the finished result and the caulk tube posed beside it. Sherry and I worked from opposite ends toward the middle, finishing behind the sink, while she stood on the counter to reach the top areas and I took care of the doorway and pantry side.
That wraps up the remaining steps in our tile installation: buffing, haze removal, sealing, and caulking. Hopefully this clears up why we didn’t detail those smaller finishing stages in earlier posts. Now back to our regularly scheduled, non-tile projects.