Grout Cleaning Business » Showers & Bathtubs

When a Regrout Just Doesn’t Cut The Mustard

Chris Blackerby — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:21:27 +0000

Sometimes showers are just WAY to far gone to be able to repair or regrout them to an acceptable level.

This shower was in really rough shape.

Notice how in the first picture the floor looks very very rough. It actually felt very rough/sand papery to the touch and it held dirt like crazy.

I’ve seen this in a few shower where the customer had used extremely strong cleaners, over and over again and they wore down the glaze.

Possibly it could have been defective tile but given the right type of chemical over time it is possible to wear away at the glaze.

This particular shower, even if I could get it reasonably clean, the dirt just sticks to it so fast it’s not worth it.

Also, notice how thick and uneven the grout lines are in this second picture?

This shower had been regrouted before and would have made the process even more difficult.

The customer did not even ask me to look at this shower (thank god) but I DID ask if I could take a picture of it =)

Bathtubs: Be Sure To Clean Under The Soap Dish!

Chris Blackerby — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 01:44:56 +0000

When doing a shower cleaning/restoration be sure to get all the “funk” underneath the soap dish that always tends to accumulate there.

Before:

After:

Regrouting Before and After

Chris Blackerby — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 05:29:46 +0000

Here is a job a did a while back. They had some stuff in their water that was really causing the grout to turn this orangish-brown color over time.

They didn’t even realize how bad it had gotten until I showed them the end result.

A job like this you could do in 6-8 hours and make between $400 – $600 with about $10 in materials (grout is pretty cheap). Just the right tools and the right know how (along with some sweat =)

Regrout Before

Regrout After

Regrouting a Shower With Shower Floor Issues

Chris Blackerby — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 02:01:25 +0000

Shower Pan: A waterproof “pan” placed beneath the floor tiles or concrete base of a shower that prevents leaking.

(Thanks to Mike Skala for the 3-D picture above)

The water in your shower floor is meant to drain both while on top of your tile and as the water seeps through the tile and grout… through the floor.

The “shower pan” is what keeps it from leaking outside, through the floor or anywhere else.

When regrouting showers many times you’ll find a big issue because the shower was not built with a correct slop or the water does not drain correctly.

When the shower floor/pan is not built so that the water drains away after it has seeped through the tile – this causes the shower sub floor/shower pan area to stay constantly wet.

This does not mean the shower will leak but it does mean that floor is never properly drying out causing mildew and other maintenance issues.

The video below is me using a tool to remove grout and as I’m using the tool, water is literally SPRAYING up out at me. The shower floor/pan area is soaked with water!

This is the true source of the customers continual mildew issue.

If they do not correct the pan issue they will ALWAYS have a shower floor that requires more work and effort to maintain.

You need to make sure your customers know this as (at least in Florida) it is a fairly common problem for the quick-build home builders to do less than perfect jobs on shower floors.

There are no “tile police” out there. There are no “inspections” for shower floors (although there should be) and the home owner ends up mysteriously having to battle mildew for the rest of their days….

BOOO!