benmiller23
01-24-2008, 08:00 AM
My wife and I have been installing a brick floor in our kitchen -- not whole bricks but a 1/2" tiles cut from old bricks. All was going well: we pulled out the previous flooring, laid out the bricks in a herringbone pattern and cut to make sure it fit in the room, mixed the thinset & installed the bricks, and did a first coat of sealant before grouting.
But yesterday, when we started grouting, we ran into trouble. Looking at it now, I'm fairly sure that our mistake was applying our sanded grout to the bricks as if we were dealing with a non-porous material (i.e. we were wiping grout across the surface of the brick too, as opposed to just troweling it into the joints), but now we're stalled halfway through the grouting, and the areas that we've grouted have a pretty serious haze.
Based on reading other threads here, I'm guessing we should give vinegar a try, but I wanted to see what people thought about our next steps:
Should we just finish the floor using our flawed method, then clean, so that at least the look of the grout and the brick surfaces are consistent across the floor?
Should we try vinegar (or something stronger) and scrub the grout off the surface of the area we've already done, and then use a better grouting method on the rest of the floor (even though this may make the floor on one side look a little different than the other)?
Any other thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks all!
But yesterday, when we started grouting, we ran into trouble. Looking at it now, I'm fairly sure that our mistake was applying our sanded grout to the bricks as if we were dealing with a non-porous material (i.e. we were wiping grout across the surface of the brick too, as opposed to just troweling it into the joints), but now we're stalled halfway through the grouting, and the areas that we've grouted have a pretty serious haze.
Based on reading other threads here, I'm guessing we should give vinegar a try, but I wanted to see what people thought about our next steps:
Should we just finish the floor using our flawed method, then clean, so that at least the look of the grout and the brick surfaces are consistent across the floor?
Should we try vinegar (or something stronger) and scrub the grout off the surface of the area we've already done, and then use a better grouting method on the rest of the floor (even though this may make the floor on one side look a little different than the other)?
Any other thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks all!