We’re going to grout this shower. We’re going to use Permacolor Select, which is a
high performance grout by Laticrete. What I think is one of the coolest things
about this Permacolor is that basically you get these color packets to… this would be
basically your grout base, and then you get a color packet to get the color of the grout
that you want. So for instance, this bathroom, we’re going
to be doing the mocha on the floor, and then we’re going to do bright white for the walls.
So, what I think is just awesome about this is that I can buy one bag of this and have
enough to do my floor and my walls for the bathroom, with no waste essentially.
Normally, you get grout bag… you buy one bag of your colored white and one bag of whatever
your other color’s going to be, and you basically use a portion of that bag, and the
rest of it’s kind of thrown out. So I think this is a great economic way to get all of
the grout that you need for your bathroom and not create too much waste. But the other
nice thing about this is that it’s a high performance grout. It can go down to 1/16
inch grout joint. So, typically you’re not going to have really
much… it’s pretty much going to solve all of your issues. There’s not really too
many a situation that you go below a 1/16 inch for the grout joint. But the other nice
thing is that it’s in the type of format. There’s no sealing of the grout, so you
don’t have to seal it. Once you have installed it, it’s already cured hard enough that
it doesn’t take on any stains or things like that. So it’s kind of like a very easy
grout to not only install but perform well over time.
When you buy this grout, you get one of these jugs, and you’ll be filling your color packet
with the proper amount of water. So we got a 12 ½ lb bag. We’ll fill it up to our
line that we have there, and we’re going to actually just basically do half bag. This
bag will pretty much do about 200 sq ft of subway tile. We only have about 75 sq ft on
the walls, and then we have like 40 sq ft on the floor. So we have plenty of grout to
do both of them. So we’ll just split the bag and make it easy to split them up.
Just make sure you have your water to your fill line. This is your little color packet.
So the other nice thing about this is that if… you basically… like each one of these
packets are, you know, under $10. So it’s a really economic way of doing this. And then
if you needed to mix up more grout at some point, you just have to buy another color
packet and then mix it with your grout base. Okay, so we’re going to only use half of
this because we’re only mixing half a bag. We recommend mixing the Permacolor Select
for about 2 minutes straight so that you get the right consistency. This is really important.
After your first mixing… I would recommend mixing for at least 2 minutes straight. Make
sure that everything is 100% mixed together. And then you have to let it sit for 5 minutes
and then mix it for another minute after that. So just wait 5 minutes, and mix it, and we’re
ready to use. Okay, so we’re going to do two different
grout colors. We’re going to do it the darker… basically, the mocha grout that we’re using
for the floor to match this back niche. So I would recommend probably doing the darker
first so that you don’t get it in your white grout joints. If you did the white first,
I think that will be problematic, and you’ll have a hard time cleaning the grout line of
these joints. So do the dark first. You’re going to have
to let that completely set up. And then the next day, do the white grout.
The first thing is just to take a real damp sponge and just wipe down your tile. You just
want to make sure that everything’s cleaned off of it. And then just pack all the joints
first before scraping it off. Then try to go on a 45 if you can. Just pretty much try
to eliminate scraping too much out of each grout joint. It’s kind of tougher for the
smaller area. And then I’m just going to wipe off my sill here. Let that set up before
wiping anything off. Typically, it takes—the high performance
stuff—about 25 minutes depending on humidity to set up enough. And basically what you’re
looking for—and we’ll come back and test this, but—when you touch this, you don’t
want to see any grout kind of pulling out with your finger. You kind of want to make
it… it should feel pretty firm or pretty close to setting up before you wipe it off.
But that all depends on your humidity level and temperature. But you really don’t want
to wipe it off beforehand. You really want to make this… it’s going to probably look
somewhat dry. Some of this stuff is going to look dry before we actually start wiping
it off. By the way, before we forget, we did do a
video that gives you tips on how to tile a stacked subway tile shower. If you’re interested
in that video, you can click right here to check it out.
Again, you just want to press on the joint and see if anything pulls out on your finger.
But you can see that all the grout on the tile is pretty dry, and that looks pretty
good. You really want to just have it enough moldable so that you can like really wash
this easily and it also holds the joint. If you let everything dry to the point where
it gets to where the tile is, you’re just really working hard to scrub it and you can’t
really tool the joint. Tool the joint, meaning when you render your sponge across, you’re
kind of just smoothing out that grout joint against the tile.
So grouting really is just really paying attention to the minor subtleties of what you’re wiping
off. You don’t want to get too aggressive with it and pull too much of the grout out
of the joint. You just want to kind of smooth out those joints a little bit so it’s nice
and flush with the tile. And if you use too much water on the sponge, you can end up washing
out the joint and end up ruining the grout joint. And the only thing I can say about
that is if that happens, the next day you’re just going to have to re-grout the area, or
even a couple of hours really. Because this stuff will be pretty well cured in a couple
of hours. But once you have too much water on your sponge, you start washing on any joints,
there’s really nothing you can do until it dries. And then you can scrape it out.
And that’s a nice thing about this grout, too, since it’s down to 1/16 inch grout
joint. If you had a joint that kind of washed out a little bit, you can just apply more
to that area as long as you have like 1/16 inch of space to fill in. So you don’t need
like to scrape out the entire joint to redo any type of repair.
Now, this will all haze over again. And then you just have to use a bucket of water and
clean that off. But I would wait for a second cleaning for at least an hour or so; maybe
wait two hours. Let this thing completely cure up before you go scrubbing it again.
But this will, you know, if you wait till the next morning and come back or something,
this will be completely hazed over again. But just a little bit of water, again, will
remove the haze. Once the grout has set up, you can then use
a flexible sealant. In this case, we used 100% silicone to seal between the vertical
mosaic and then the horizontal sill plate. Give us a thumbs up if you like the tips in
today’s video. Also, if you’re building a basement bathroom and you want to learn
7 pro tips that’ll help you out with that, click right here. The guide is totally free.
It’s short and to-the-point. And the 7 pro tips that we share could really help you out
quite a bit. We’ll also update you on the online course that we’re making about the
shower that we showed you in today’s video. Thanks so much for watching today’s tutorial.
If you got any questions, ask them down in the comments, and we’re more than happy
to help you out. Take care!