Re-Grouting The Shower - Fixing More DIY Mistakes

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We decided it was time to fix some of our DIY mistakes. Last week I shared fixing our cabinets.

Fixing DIY Mistakes - Cabinets

Fixing DIY mistakes has not been one of my favorite projects. However, this one was necessary!

Over the last year or two, I started to notice when I cleaned the shower, that the surface became "gritty". Like the grout was coming out. It was weird. It mostly happened on the shower ledge. Then I started to see spots where grout was actually missing on the wall below the ledge. The area that seemed most affected was the ledge and below, plus the lower area under the shower head. UGH!!

Here you can see it's cracked, wearing down and even a few holes. This is not good.

I'm not sure what I did wrong. It could have been a number of things.

Did I mix the grout to dry or too wet?
Maybe I didn't smoosh it into the joints well enough?
Did I not let the grout set long enough before I started cleaning the tiles?

All I do know is that the grout was coming out. Only in certain areas.... The upper walls were fine! I could scrub them and nothing would budge.

Well, we procrastinated and procrastinated.... I even caulked with some silicone to "plug" up some of the holes/cracks. We did not want to do this job. It felt huge, overwhelming and very intimidating. So, we just kept putting it off.

Come this last winter, we decided it was time to bite the bullet and just do it. The most intimidating part in our minds was digging out the grout. It was going to take FOREVER! At least that's what we thought.

Turns out after watching a few YouTube videos, we could grind this out much quicker. They make special Diamond Oscillating Multi Tool Blades Kit for Grout Removal. What?? The two blades on the right attach to our Dewalt Multi Tool. The tool on the left is a hand tool for tight spots.

Let's just say, this was a game changer! I taped off the entire shower area, I didn't was dust all over the bathroom. Then hubby got to work. He is much steadier with the multi tool. He had it all ground out in about an hour! Yay!!

It doesn't have to be completely ground out. Some of it just 'fell' out and some of the grout is in there pretty good. It just needs to be deep enough for new grout to adhere. So, it may look like there is still quite a bit of grout still in there, but it's about 1/8" deep so plenty of room for new grout.

There's a lot of holes there. Which kind of tells me I need to smoosh harder to fill in the space.

Okay, now that part is done, I needed to get things ready for grout. I had to remove all of the caulking along the shower pan. I REALLY don't like removing caulking.

Oh, let's not forget that we had to remove the shower doors to accomplish this task. All the caulking along the door frame had to be scraped off. Yay, me! Oh, well. It needs to be done!

I think we are finally ready to grout. This time I decided I wasn't going to mix my own grout. I purchased premixed grout. I was really hoping that this Arctic White was going to be the same color as the other Bright White. Thank The Lord, it was! I found this at Home Depot, Fusion Pro Grout.

I did my research. I was hoping it was going to work. It's not necessarily an easy grout to work with because you don't have a lot of time to work with it. You only have 5 minutes to apply, then you need to start cleaning.

Here we go! I taped off the shower pan. I've got my float, 2 buckets of clean water, sponge and microfiber cloth. I suggest you always read the directions on the container and follow them to a T! Also, watch videos of how others have done it. It really helps!

Let's go! Progress is being made!

It's coming out nice! It wasn't as bad as I thought working with this premixed grout. It was the perfect consistency. Granted, I had to work in smaller sections, but it also gave me time to take breaks.

It was tough, because we were also in winter... I had to dump the grout water in the stone area in the backyard, wading through snow... fun, right? I completed all the sections in 6 batches. Whew!

I will have to say it came out great! It's been 3 months since I finished this, I have scrubbed and cleaned and it is holding up beautifully!! Yay!

Here are some finished photos and some close ups.

Lastly, I re-caulked the corner seams and where the tile meets the shower pan.

Then we reinstalled the shower doors and this time, I used black caulking. I will say the black caulking on the black shower door frame looks soooo much better!