Old grout needs help cannot replace - Tile Advice

[Ang]

I had a contractor that ruined my bathroom tile when he installed it . I knew it was bad but 3 years on, it’s a disaster. The grout on the floor between my tiles has pits and holes in it. Some of the grout lines were not even completely filled and you can see the sides of the tiles . The tile on the shower wall has white grout with black mortar coming through. None of it is sealed. I cannot afford to hire someone or to replace the tile. How do I fix this? These are like 2x2 tiles so removing 100% of the grout to start over is not an option. It would take a million years to do that. I am not concerned that the grout color won’t match. Can I regrout just in the places where tile sides are visible so there is something for the new grout to stick to? In the areas of the wall grout where the black mortar is showing , can I scrape a bunch of the grout off to get tile side that new grout can adhere to? Again I cannot remove all the grout

 

[Tony_C]

Hi Ang, As you probably guessed the only real way to solve this would be to regrout, you can try raking out some the areas where the grout is lacking and put more grout in but mostly grout on grout never adheres very well as its quite a thin layer. It could also look patchy.

Best cheap method though with a full re grout not being an option would be to try above and then freshen up the colour of all the grout with Mapei Fuga fresca pen, you can also do the walls with the darker adhesive showing through to disguise this.


Forgive the Malaysian video but you get the idea