How to Mix Sanded Grout

How are you doing? And guess what, I’m getting ready to grout this floor tile and we’ve got a little problem. As you can tell, I’m already on an existing ceramic tile floor and it's already been grouted and we got matching tile but now we have to grout it and we’re going to hope that the grout that I’m going to install is going to match. I’m going to tell you how to do that as best as possible and I want to talk a little bit about mixing grout. But first of all, here’s what you need to understand. You have to use sanded grout when you grout floor tile like this because the joints are so big. These are 3/8, 7-inch wide and what you need to understand is that if you used regular wall grout, that’s just port on cement if you mixed it and put it in, it would crack. You’ll get these little cracks in it because it's just too much grout and it’ll crack. The sanded grout contains small pieces of silica sand that act like the rocks that you see in the concrete. So the sanded grout actually is like miniature concrete and the silica sand is extremely hard and that’s what gives the sand and grout its durability. So that’s why you want to use sanded grout on floors because you walked on it. Now, what about getting the matching color? What you have to do and what I did before we started, we cleaned this tile floor and you have to clean the grout so that you can match it. If you make a mistake and just get a little grout things and put it on your floor, it's not going to ever work because your existing grout could be dirty. What I found to be the best cleaner for tile floors is Oxygen bleach. So just go to oxygenBleach.com and you’ll be able to learn all about Oxygen Bleach on how to clean floors. Needless to say, now what you do is before you actually mix up the grout, what we’re going to do in just a second, after you clean the floor, don’t try to match it right away because the grout is a different color when it's wet. Check this out. Look here; just a few minutes ago, I did this on purpose. I put some water right here. Just regular clean water and look how much darker the grout line is between the wet grout and the dry grout. So after you clean the tile, make sure that you allow it to dry for a day or two before you go to match it. Go ahead and get a little color sample, a little cards whatever. Hold it against your grout. I did that. I’ve actually taken a piece of the grout to the showroom and try to match it. When you get the grout, the next step is, is just take a little bit of it, a very small amount. But, what the grout looks like dry out of the bag is very, very close to what it's going to look like when it completely is mixed up with water and it eventually cures and dries and that’s the final tip. What you need to understand is, if you go to put the grout down and after it's mixed up, it's going to be very, very dark and your going to freak out thinking you’ve got the wrong color. Don’t worry, if you’ve matched it this way and you got it pretty close and it’s looks pretty good, you’re going to be okay when it dries. So, let’s talk a little bit now about how to mix the grout up. I like to use a smaller type bucket like this. Not a big, giant 5-gallon and I go ahead and pour. I don’t pour all the bag in. Never pour the whole bag in but pour maybe about half of the bag or so. And then you just have to take some water, some clear water and pour it in, nice-clear water, not too much. I like to use a nice stiff knife and just kind of mix it up. The problem is, the reason, if you add too much water and you’ve already poured all the grout from the bag into it, like right here looks at this. I added too much water. This grout is way too thin and also, look how dark it's getting. It's a much darker brown that was before we started. So, that grout right there, is way too thin. It’s a big mistake. I added too much water. So now that I still have some grout leftover, I can put some powdered grout in here to thicken it up. It doesn’t take much effort to mix up this grout. It's getting a lot better but look at that, it's still a little too thin. See, how it rolls around and the bucket, it kind of moves. Too thin, I got to add more of this powdered grout. We should have it just right now. That’s looking really good. That’s looking great. Look how stiff that is. See that is nice and stiff, it doesn’t want to foil and scrape down the sides, make sure you’ll get it all mixed up. That’s looking really good. Check that out. That’s nice. Look at that, see? That doesn’t want to float. That looks like bricklayer’s mortar. That’s really, really the exact way in my opinion to mix sanded for a grout. It's that simple. Make sure you get a good match and make sure the tile floor is clean. You’ll be good to go. I’m Tim Carter for askthebuilder.com