major (as in, MAJOR) grout mess - please advise

[les_garten]

I'm a little confused here. It's only 56 sq feet of tile. Just chisel it up and re-lay? I'm reading John's book now, and his book basically says that Grout is concrete and you'll most likely not get it off. Additionally your tile sounds like it has a porous surface and will always look different from the rest of the floor because of the grout fill.

[BTM]

Well now! after reading the WHOLE story, I will rephrase my answer.

1st off, polymer is added to grout to prolong the drying time. acid will not affect the polymer, but the cement particles. I believe you said it was porcelain.

I would proceed like this: get a good quality sealer and the little bottle & brush for applying it. Seal all the joints (twice) if they are in satisfactory condition. Next day you can then use the acid wash to help loosen the cement in the grout, scrub like he!!, rinse very thoroughly.

Keep a fan going to push that air outside and you won't have to worry about corrosion on metal from such a weak solution.

you can work 1 tile at a time with a spray bottle and use the stiffest brush available.

BTW, I would insist the handyman clean up his own mess/mistakes

[prashster]

Re: muriatic acid: be careful.

1. Remember "A.A.A": Always Add Acid (to water). Never add water to acid. It can explode in your face.

2. When you apply the acid dilution to your surface, it will bubble and FUME. Wear a respirator and have plenty of ventilation or you'll choke and hurt yrself.

Budget allowing, I'd see how hard it is to remove one tile. If you can pop them all off without trouble, it might be easier to just replace.

[Ceacy]

Well, it took a few days to get to this point but the story so far is that this product acid magic which is made by a company called Certol seems to be working so far. The product is a mixture of modified muriatic acid and hydrochloric acid. It is requiring a huge amount of scrubbing with nylon brushes but at least we are making headway. According to the directions you can use the acid repeatedly to the same surface and it will not harm the tile. I will let you know how successful we are. The good news is that the ile is confined to one bathroom and if it doesn't look exactly like the rest of the tile in the house
it won't be too objectionable.

We talked to the distributer of the Shaw grout that we used, about the directions on the bag with regards to the amount of water reccommended and he said that the directions are wrong and that "everyone" knows that you don't follow the directions on the bag. The irony was that we insisted that the installer follow the directions because we thought that adding too much water might lighten the color of the grout. At this point we don't even care about the color anymore!

Thanks to all of you for your helpful suggestions and I will follow up with an update on how it turns out so that the next person who has the misfortune to experience this can know if this product might be useful in their situation. It was reccommended by a very experienced mason.

Thanks again, Ceacy

[Ceacy]

Dear John,
Thanks for the suggestion, I did visit the site. It mentions not using it on some glazed tiles. This tile is a porcelain tile that is meant to look like stone or slate so the glaze is not shiny. I am not sure if being a glazed tile means that it is not porous, or if a glazed tile can still be porous to some degree. Anyway, maybe if the acid magic doesn't do enough , the SureClean 600 could be another alternative. I hope I don't have to go there but I can't say that I have alot of confidence one way or the other. Thanks for your suggestion.
Ceacy

[doitright]

Originally Posted by Ceacy

We talked to the distributer of the Shaw grout that we used, about the directions on the bag with regards to the amount of water reccommended and he said that the directions are wrong and that "everyone" knows that you don't follow the directions on the bag.

Hi Ceacy

I can't believe someone would tell you this! Especially a distributor!

If I were you, I would contact Shaw grout directly. I'm sure they'll defend your position about following their label directions.

[Ceacy]

Well to all who have followed this thread, the verdict is in. The product Acid Magic by Certol did remove all of the grout off the tiles. It took a lot of scrubbing with both nylon bristle brushes and burlap but the tiles look like they did when they were set . We will have to re-grout and I have no way of knowing what the Acid Magic did to the thinset (Flexabond). I guess only time will tell if there are any other deleterious effects of having used this product but it sure looks better than it did!!!

Thanks for all of your help.
Ceacy

[Brian in San Diego]

Ceacy,

I'm glad everything worked out for you! And kudos on using the word "deleterious" in a sentence on this forum...I love it!

Brian