apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Chris, rather than re-grouting the floor you might want to consider some grout whitener. It's probably available at Lowes or Home Depot. It goes on like a paint or stain and brightens the grout. You just let it sit and then wipe it off the tiles. I imagine you could seal it then to keep it nice looking.

I had good luck with this in my last house.

Could you get some small white mosaic tiles and fill the gp in with them? Not the prettiest solution, but it would be easier to clean.

...oops. Gap, not gp...

Chris,

If it's a recent renovation, that particular tile should still be available. Have you asked your super if they could finish it off? They need to chip out the large are of grout, snip some tiles to shape, backbutter the new tiles and just regrout the area. If you were ambitious and found the tiles, it's less than a few hours work on a weekend.

Three things. Bleach reacts poorly with grout (it is basically portland cement) and will make things worse in the long run.

The suggestion to use a whitener is one solution. But the reason for the dirt is that the grout is highly porous. You need to seal the grout. You can combine the two -- You can find a whitening sealer at HD or Lowes -- it ofen comes in a bottle with a built-in applicator on the top.

If you are more ambitous, you can knock out the grout that was there and fill in the space. Not a small amount of work. You can stick some smaller tiles in there, or simply get some self-leveling cement and fill in the gap.

Chris,

The first photo makes the space look like it's a little nook. Can you put a small table of some sort there to cover the area?

Also, how long do you plan on living there? I had a crappy bathroom floor, commercial linoleum tiles, in an apartment. It would have been easy for me to go over them with fresh tile but I didn't want to spend a penny of my own money on my landlord's crappy bathroom. I ended up staying there 5 years so the 100 bucks I would have spent probably would have been worth it.


If you are entertaining regrouting then why not? If it's going to make you happy and landlord doesn't give shite go for it. Those gaps are pretty big too so if you wanted to take a mini grinder and grind them down a little bit it may be very easy to regrout with a fresh bright white grout. If you wanted to go a step further, you can buy a small amount of grout sealer in a roller tube and seal over your new grout. Those patches can then be redone with some individual pieces of white tile that you can pick up at a tile shop.

I have also used a grout cleaner. It seems (I am guessing) like an acid and actually takes away a layer of the grout. It cannot be left on for long or you will not be left with any grout.

After rinsing it out, the grout is literally brand new.

It is not difficult to use, it is a powder mixed with water. Home Depot, Lowes both have it.

As for what to do with it after it is cleaned....um... good luck trying to get the landlord to fix tile/grout that is not cracked, broken but just dirty.

careful with pets when you use grout whitener--but it does work!

Thanks for all the suggestions on this! I can tell you from experience that my landlord and super aren't going to be any help at all on something like this (they'll do major repairs, but forget about asking for help on anything cosmetic). But I do plan on staying a while, so I'm really just looking for the cheapest, easiest way to make it look better. I'll definitely check out the grout whitener and sealer option.

It seems like the best suggestion so far is using grout cleaner, then sealing it to make maintenance easier, especially if you want to keep the look of having grout.

Another alternative, if your landlord would allow it, is to try to smooth out or fill in the nooks and crannies in those gaps so that gunk doesn't easily get caught in those spaces. Then paint the whole floor with durable waterproof floor paint, probably a white; it would cover the discoloration and seal the floor making it easier to clean. I'm not exactly sure how nice it would turn out since I've never done this before, but I've seen it nicely done on old hardwood floors in some raw loft apartments.

Would covering the tile with sheet linoleum be an option? Bathrooms are usually so small that it's reasonable, and will make it much easier to clean and more pleasant on the eye...

Do the grout-bleaching thing throughout, as suggested above.

Then prime and paint the affected area, using masking tape to maintain the existing width of the main grid's grout lines as unpainted area.

Then use grout sealer on all the unpainted grout throughout the bathroom so it stays clean and stuff doesn't stick to it.

I think you should print some of your favorite text on to a small piece of paper, and decoupage (sp?) the little tile-free spot. Make it a secret surprise for your friends that really notice details.

If it was my place, I'd make every attempt to fill those gaps with tile.

I'd first try to locate more of that particular tile. It looks pretty generic/institutional, perhaps American Olean or somesuch, and I wouldn't think it would be difficult to match reasonably well at all.

Perhaps your super doesn't want to go through the effort of patching the gaps, but if you were up to bugging him about it, he'd have to have extra down in a storage room somewhere.

Short of that, I'd steal the tile from elsewhere. Maybe from under a sink cabinet, or from way in the back of a linen closet--surely there's someplace in that bathroom where a few mis-matched or missing tiles would be far less noticable.

re: "But I do plan on staying a while"

So do it the right way, with tile.

If the grout is clean and not sealed, it can be stained uniformly and sealed in one application with a grout stain sold online at http://www.groutdye.com.
This company matches Mapei stain colors (see Lowe's for Mapei grout color charts.) Earlier this year, I re-stained the grout with their product on a 1,000 sqft tile floor. The tile color is light brown ... and the previous owners had grouted it nearly black! It was like living on top of a crossword puzzle grid .. unbearable. I got a close match to the much lighter tile color and am thrilled with the unifying result. If you go "white" ... the gaps wouldn't be so hard on the eyes.

just need to add ... the product goes a long way ... you should also stain the gaps. I know it's not a perfect solution, but you mentioned economy and that you rent. You can do this for about $50 in product cost plus sore knees. Good luck :)

OK. What about high gloss white paint that will "seal" it and make cleaning it easier?