Help...haze not coming off new tile

[kcamp1980]

Hello,

I am hoping someone will have some advice for us. We had new tile installed in our dream home and we are getting very concerned. About 2 weeks ago the installer used some sort of acid to remove haze on our newly installed tile. It helped but we still had a lot of haze. Then yesterday someone else used a haze remover on the tile. It now looks even worse. Please help us figure out what we can do? To add insult to injury the grout was watered down too much by the installer and is white when it should have been a very dark brown. The tile company has offered to have the grout stained but the company who is going to complete the staining said the tile needs to have the haze removed first. This has been dragging on almost 2 weeks now and we need to get moved in but can't until we get our floors cleaned up.

I would be so grateful for anyone advice on what we can do. My husband is willing to do the work to just get it done. He has been working on this house for 8 weeks for hours everyday so I hate for him to have to do even more for the one thing we hired out but at this point I am not sure what we should do?

Thanks so much for reading this post and any advice you may have!

Kari

[cx]

Welcome, Kari.

Some specifics, please. Links would be good. You can't post them, but just post the URL with and extra space in the www and a moderator will light it up.

1. What is the tile. Name brand, make and model.

2. What grout was used. Name brand, make and model.

3. Why is the installer not returning to remove the haze he provided and didn't fully remove?

4. "Then yesterday someone else used a haze remover on the tile." Why not the original installer? And again, name brand, make and model of the haze remover.

Let's start there.

My opinion; worth price charged.

[Tool Guy - Kg]

What CX asked.

And I’d really want to know if this is grout haze or if the tile surface has been microscopically damaged with etching. Can you scrub a little 1” section with a white scrubbie (because they don’t leave a stain) for a minute with just water and see any improvement?

[kcamp1980]

Thank you both for responding back. Here are the answers I know to the questions above:

1. The tile.

2. MAPEI Keracolor-S grout.

3. After the grout installer "removed" the haze the first time, I asked if someone else could come try again because it clearly was not removed. He really just made a mess while installing the grout, got grout all over our door trim everywhere, grease all over our doors/walls...then our grout color ending up being almost white b/c of how he mixed the grout. He took a bucket that our water line was placed in for the fridge while my husband was getting the supplies to cap it and put another bucket which was clearly cracked and stuck it under it so that it was leaking water on the floor next to our kitchen cabinets. He just didn't leave a very good impression on us and we are the type of people you really have to push in order for us to get frustrated. He used some sort of acid to remove the haze as my husband saw it at the time but didnt remember exactly what it was.

4. My husband is almost positive he used this product. Aqua Mix Grout Haze Remover.
The floor looked better after the initial acid treatment but still had tons of haze clearly. Then the haze remover was applied and it looks like the photos originally shown. I tried to wipe some of the white/haze off today and was able to get a good portion of it removed but it was really difficult and I still saw the white/gray haze that looked like it was showing up after the acid treatment. I can't get that off no matter how hard I try and scrub.

The flooring company is having stanley steemer come out tomorrow and they said that will let us know if they are able to do anything to help the condition of the floors. I am so afraid they have been damaged somehow and are etched as you mentioned could be the case. We have been dealing with this for over a month and it is a large area (almost 2,000 sf).

[kcamp1980]

This is how it looked after the initial acid treatment was done on the tile/grout.

[cx]

Please verify the links I added to your post are correct, Kari. You may post your own links going forward (anti-spam measure the site has in place).

Do you know specifically what was used for the initial acid cleaning? And how long after the grout was applied was that acid used?

[Kman]

Let's hope it wasn't muriatic acid.

Sulfamic acid crystals would work, but the grout would need to be at least a week or two old before using it.

I often had trouble with Keracolor washing out, and with haze from it.

[Jason@mapei]

Mapei has a cement grout haze remover.

https://cdnmedia.mapei.com/docs/libr...rsn=4ba870cf_0

another option here

https://cdnmedia.mapei.com/docs/libr...rsn=363f8d55_0

It is typically the installers responsibility to remove all grout haze.

Good luck