$100 Room Challenge | Week 2: Refreshing the Hex Tile

September is hurricane season and in Georgia we are preparing for the backlash of Florence. Everyone is headed in-land from the coast and traffic patterns are crazy. The second week of the $100 Room Challenge is usually pretty non-eventful for me. I'm still in the undecided planning zone still wondering which direction to take the space. This week I turned my attention to our 60 year old matte black hex tile floor.

Week 1: The Before & Plans

The tiles are without a doubt the best part of the bathroom. You couldn't see any of the grout lines, not because they weren't there but because they were incredibly dirty. If it weren't for the white tiles you probably wouldn't even know it was hexagonal. As a refresher, here's how it looked last week and when we moved in.

I tried cleaning it with conventional cleaning materials but nothing was getting 60 year old grime out of that grout. Nothing. After researching different options I came across a dye like process that can refresh grout called Grout Renew. It only costed $9 off the shelf at Home Depot ($13 online).

I started applying it with a toothbrush to all the lines and instantly felt better. I could see the grime disappear and the beautiful 6 sides of each tile come to life. After applying it to about half of the floor, I let it dry completely. The bottle says to wipe off as you go but I found that with my really old grout I had to let it dry for it to stick.

When everything was dry I used my cleaning brush and some vinegar water to brush off the excess. Vinegar helps remove grout haze and in this case grout renew too.

As you can tell in the photo, this was very very tedious. Before I scrubbed the first half off I even wondered if all this was worth it. 5 minutes later I scrubbed off the first tile and saw the light at the end of the tunnel. It did take me a few hours, but now you can actually see the lines around every tile.

I still have lots of leftovers and little specks to clean up, but it turned out better than I expected.

There was also many places where the wall tile grout had fallen out and left a gaping hole. I used the premixed grout I keep in our tool closet and filled them all in. 

I 100% recommend Grout Renew and am so glad I made it to the end. Be sure to visit all the Week 2 posts below!

Budget Used
Grout Renew - $9
   

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