Kitchen Grout: Done

Woo-hoo! And I was super lucky that I only had to work on grouting one of the walls because Chris did the other one while I was at a fair. Awesome.

A few nights ago after work we got to grouting the wall behind the sink


While Chris used the bigger grout float to work on the larger areas, I used the smaller one to get in all the nooks and crannies

Soon we met in the middle

(hello big ol' butt)

Once we had finished shoving the grout all into place it was time to clean the bits that dropped onto the granite before it set up

And once there was a little haze on the tile (a bit later than this)...

...it was time to get the sponges out and wipe the tiles clean

We keep two buckets on hand - one that's "dirty" and one that's "clean." After we use the sponge for a while and it gets dirty with grout we clean off the sponge in the "dirty" bucket. Once we rinse it out a few times we dunk it in the "clean" bucket, using cleaner water to get the final bit of grout rinsed out of the sponge. This seems to be the quickest way to keep the water as fresh as possible so you're not smearing dirty water all over the tile.

Once we cleaned and cleaned and cleaned all the tile of grout residue it was time to caulk the bottom seam. We laid down two pieces of blue tape to ensure a clean line and laid it in

We removed the tape while the caulk was still wet to make sure we had a nice, clean line

The grout is a little too WHITE for both Chris and my's taste, but we wanted to use caulking on this wall at the connection of backsplash to countertop because the sink is on this side and we wanted to make it was waterproof as possible.

I waited a day for the grout to set up and then it was time to seal it (I sealed the counter at the same time). I got our sealer ready

Then I used a brush to paint the sealer onto all the grout lines

(Don't you like how fancy and nice we keep the turret nook to the left? :) One day this room will look nice - I hope - but at the moment it's one of the rooms in the house that keeps all the tools and other remnants of current projects going on. Oh yeah, and nice craft fabric held up with thumbtacks as our curtains. Classy.)

After leaving the sealer on for 3-5 minutes, I took a clean towel and wiped away the excess

And after about 30 minutes I was done applying the sealer and wiping everything clean

Today, after the sealer had 24 hours to cure (they recommend 24-72 hours and I'm just not that patient) I put on all the switchplate covers. So now we can officially check off kitchen grout AND install switchplate covers off the list :)


SA-WEET! :)