July 09, 2009
An Old School Way To Remove Grout
Here is a really old way to remove grout… apparently this little document recommends “kitchen utensils” hey… whatever works for ya but I have a few better ways up my sleeve.
Old School Way To Remove Grout
Posted in Regrouting & Repair, Tile & Grout | No Comments »
July 09, 2009
Full Shower Restoration
Here is a pretty nasty shower we did a while back – we actually had a LOT of caulking to remove and even took the whole door off in this case.
Here is a pretty bad shower
After
Imagine what the home owner had to say to this!
You can expect to make anywhere from $500-$700 for a full size shower like this… all done in a single day!
Even though showers aren’t my favorite they definitely pay some bills.
Posted in Before & After Pictures, Regrouting & Repair, Tile & Grout | No Comments »
February 17, 2008
Cleaning and Color Sealing Step by Step
Here some pictures of the progression of the dirty – clean – color seal.
Dirty:
Cleaned:
Color Sealed:
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February 17, 2008
Grout Color Sealing Job From This Week
Here is a quick 250 sq foot clean and color seal we did this week.
Before:
During:
After:
Job was complete in a few hours.
Posted in Before & After Pictures, Color Sealing & Staining | No Comments »
February 15, 2008
Wax | Topical Coatings + Tile & Grout = Big Mistake
I had a job today where the customer had applied a topical coating to the floor. Initially when they applied the wax to the floor it looked “great” but as time went on the topical coating begin to wear, scuff and accumulate dirt. The more it was cleaned the more inconsistent the floor looked (partial wax removal).
Here is the product that was applied:
When it was being cleaned you could definitely tell the floor had a coating- the cleaning “slurry” had a thickness to it.
You can actually pick it up off the floor.
The floor required a lot of extra scrubbing and dwell time but it was able to be removed so that we could color seal over it.
Luckily this was a residential type of product that was fairly easy to remove.
It’s good to check the floor thoroughly to check for coatings and wax type of products that may have been applied. Look for an inconsistent gloss that continues from tile to grout. Also you can acid test the grout lines, if they don’t fizz up (like they should normally) it’s a another hint to look for a topical coating.
On some jobs the coating can be removed with a little extra elbow grease, dwell time or pressure but on others it can be nearly impossible to remove 100%. On bad situations sometimes it’s better to just leave a floor alone than to spend all day working on it only to have the floor become 70-80% better – which would only create a blotchy, inconsistent floor.
 Word of Warning – Beware the WaxÂ
Posted in Grout Cleaning & Sealing | No Comments »
February 14, 2008
Racatac – Next Generation Knee Pads
This was actually one of the very first tools I decided to get for the biz. Takes a lot of stress off your knees. Not the best for small areas but always a good tool to have around.
I ended up ordering mine from Contractors Direct.
It was the cheapest price I could find at about $159.99. It comes with 2″ and 3″ casters. Best to go with 2″ for tile and grout work where you actually are working or color sealing grout lines.
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February 13, 2008
How to Keep From Banging Your Head on the Customer’s Chandelier
Self explanatory. If you’re continually staring at the floor I guarantee you or one of your guys will eventually bang your head on the chandelier.
My crude but effective solution -
Just makes it a bit more conspicuous and in plain view when you’re looking down.
Some of the more delicate chandeliers require a bit more “protections” -
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February 12, 2008
Cleaning Pictures From Today
Here are some pictures from today’s job.
One stage cleaning process using a phosphoric acid based cleaning product diluted at about 8 to 1. Ran the blue scrub brush over the grout lines and then hit it with the turbo hybrid for rinsing and extracting at about 1500 psi.
Floor hadn’t totally dried out yet but you get the point.
Customer was a referral from a past client and also a real estate agent. Also got a decent tip 
Just another day.
Posted in Before & After Pictures, Grout Cleaning & Sealing | No Comments »
February 11, 2008
Shower Restoration – Grout Removal – Replacement – Recualking
Here is a real garden variety type of job that we do in showers. Typical shower is a few years old (about 4 years old to be exact). The water does not drain properly causing build up of hard water near the drain. Caulking is beginning to mildew and the shower door starts getting a little hard to see through.
Before:
The shower is cleaned using an acid and a special cleaning process to remove all the hard water, soap scum and mineral deposits that have built up on the shower.
Next the caulking is removed. You can clean the mildew out of the caulking to a certain degree but I find that I can get perfect results by removing the caulking and replacing it. Next we remove the grout on the floor and minimally the first rows of grout on the bottom and do our best to blend it in to the existing tile and grout.
This applies mainly to newer showers where the problem is isolated mainly to the caulking and the lower part of the shower. From about half way on up – the shower looked nearly perfect.
It should also be noted that many people call us to “clean” their showers but in my experience it’s very difficult to clean shower grout perfectly. So in most cases the grout is completely removed and replaced in a shower like this.
Takes a few hours but you can’t beat the results of that “oh so clean” shower look.
Posted in Regrouting & Repair | No Comments »
February 10, 2008
Storage Solutions – I robbed a Home Depot!
I’ve been trying to deal with the ever increasing amount of equipment that we all end up accumulating. I made a nice little find on some heavy duty shelving sourced from a Home Depot:
I ended up getting 3 nine foot tall upright sections (3 uprights make up two continuous shelving units). They are also about 4 feet deep.
They have tons of space with room to “grow” into.
These two racks only set me back $150 – found off of craigslist.
And of course, they didn’t think it would fit in my truck – HA!
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February 09, 2008
When to say “no” – Regrouts and Repair + Real Estate Agents and House Flippers
Here is a job I was sent to estimate from a real estate investor. He wanted me to “clean it up”.
This also reminds why I stopped chasing real estate investors and flippers. Early on I figured these guys might have a lot of work available because of all the renovations they were doing.
What I found is that there are exceptions but generally land lords and people trying to flip houses for a profit are happy if it looks good but obviously aren’t in it for the long term and really attempt to hammer you on price. Perhaps this is an obvious statement but it’s worth mentioning.
This shower pan was way too far gone. The smell was terrible, the water had completely rotted away the baseboards and was leaking though the other side of the wall where the closet was. The carpet was actually totally wet in the closet.
I told the guy the truth – there was an obvious concern for mildew and mold growth behind the wall and it was way behind any sort of “patch job” he was looking for and that he should call a mold remediation company to take a look at.
I have found house “flippers” to be the worst and real estate agents to be just slightly better. I’ve gotten decent jobs from realtors, have solicited them in the past but they are certainly not the low hanging fruit type of customers.
Here is an interesting read over at Contractor Talk about a contractor dealing with a house “flipper”:
Title: Is this typical for dealing with “Flippers”
Posted in Business & Marketing, Regrouting & Repair | No Comments »
February 05, 2008
When Good Regrouts Go Bad!
What’s a couple of loose tile, right?
This was a job a while back where I should have know better. I had sent a crew out there to regrout this shower but I hadn’t done a thorough inspection and there were loose tiles. In some places it was just grout holding the tiles in place.
They just kept peeling off and dropping like flies. 70% of the main wall was totally wet.
We ended up charging him for removing the tile and trashing it so it wasn’t a complete waste…
This is why I love hate doing regrouts. There are alot more variables, it’s a dirty/dusty job, you make less money than floors BUT there are no shortage of homes out there with nasty, dirty, mildewed showers that love to respond to all my ads…. the saga continues.
Posted in Regrouting & Repair | No Comments »
February 05, 2008
Which Grout Brush is Best?
I’ve tried both of the more common grout brushes out there:
I definitely favor the blue brush made by Flo-Pac. The bristles have a little more give to them and help them get into the line more efficiently.
This is how you know when you “might” need to replace yours
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February 05, 2008
How to Get Equipment for “Almost” Free
I got an interesting phone call today – went something like this:
“Hello, I don’t know if you’d be interested or not but I have some tile and grout equipment I need to get rid of and I’ll sell it dirt cheap.”
The first thing that came to my mind was….Define: “DIRT CHEAP”.
To my pleasant surprise, the cliché lived up to it’s name.
Turns out this gentlemen had a cleaning business about 5 years ago and had to get out due to health reasons. He had purchased a high pressure portable (one of the early models actually), a Turbo Hybrid, various wands, vacuums and accessories. He had sold all his accounts 4 years ago and had been storing all of this equipment for the last 4 years in a storage unit. He recently added up all the payments he had been making on his storage unit and realized he had better just get rid of the stuff.
Lucky for me I was at the right place at the right time – here is what I scored:
Don’t ask me why I brought my station wagon – I didn’t think there would be that much stuff:
(both the seller and my girlfriend didn’t think I could get all this stuff in the car – HA!)
The score:
1 – High Pressure Portable – FX-88 (older model)
2 – Carpet Wand
3 – Turbo Force Turbo Hybrid Spinner Tool (older model)
4 – Gekko Hard Surface Wand
5 – Carpet Wand
6 – TWO Back Pack Vacuums (need some work)
7 – Janitorial Push cart
8 – Mini Blower
9 – Collapsible loading ramp (always wanted one)
10 – Tone of miscellaneous micro fiber rags, supplies, bags, hoses, etc
Now the million dollar question – how much did I pay for all this semi-used second hand equipment?
$100 (one hundred dollars)
No, seriously. That’s all I paid. When the seller told me how much he was letting it go for – my response was
“I’ll be right over.”
Anyone in the market for some used equipment? 
Posted in Equipment & Tools | 1 Comment »
February 04, 2008
Chinese made tools?
I saw this the other day at a supply house that caters to granite and marble fabrication shops.
Posted in Equipment & Tools, Stone & Concrete | No Comments »
February 04, 2008
Finding the “perfect” color
I usually carry the Grout Perfect Color Kit which contains 12 colors but the customer was looking for something outside of the range of what I had. It took quite a bit of experimentation and trial and error to find the color she was finally looking for but only after concocting a hybrid color abomination sourced from 3 different grout manufacturers was I able to get it perfect.
I was also able to use up a lot of the half empty bottles I’ve been carrying around in my truck for over a year
Can anyone identifty the 3 different grout color manufacturers I used here?
Posted in Color Sealing & Staining | No Comments »
September 29, 2007
The Stone and Tile School
If you’re interested in finding out how to get started in the tile and grout restoration industry check out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG0g4jSw3A0
Posted in Training & Education | No Comments »