Break the inner seal
OR
Grouting and caulking.

Rob grouting

Rob grouting

The remaining steps after putting the tile on the wall are grouting and caulking. Tuesday night I spent about 4 hours grouting. It turned out to be one of the hardest parts of the project in my opinion. As we have learned, grout is specially colored mortar, which you put between the tiles to help keep them in place and keep out water.

Grout that fell off the float

Grout that fell off the float

The first step in grouting is to mix it up, which I did using a margin trowel. The Hometime Tile video which we learned much from said it is better to mix it a bit dry, so I erred on the dry side. Then I let the grout “slake” for 10 minutes, which is just to let it sit and let the powder and water mix on their own a bit. Then I stirred one more time, and used the margin trowel to put some grout onto my grout float and smear it onto the tile and into the cracks. This was much more difficult than it looked in the video. Probably 80% of the grout was just falling off into the tub instead of getting into the cracks. I decided that maybe it was still too wet, so I added a bit more powder. That was even worse. I resorted to shoving it in with my fingers (with gloves) instead of with the grout float. After tiring of that, I decided to try adding more water, and it got a bit better. Then I decided to look at the bag of grout again, and it said to mix with water or a latex additive for “enhanced performance”. I was beginning to suspect that I really needed the additive. Clare was in town at the YMCA, so I called her and asked her to look for latex additive at Walmart. No luck. So, I kept chugging along, slowly getting better at it such that I was only slopping about 40-50% of the grout into the tub. I let Clare try for awhile, and she started off about the same as me, so I promptly took over simply in the name of time-saving.

Side wall after grouting and caulking

Side wall after grouting and caulking

Thursday night I did the final step — caulking. I bought the caulk that my dad swears by — Polyseam Seal — which is an acrylic caulk with a silicone additive. I ended up buying a tube for a caulking gun as well as a small tube, because I wasn’t sure that we had a working caulking gun or not. My dad said that the small tube would probably be enough, but we ended up having some pretty big gaps in some places, so I ended up using both tubes. However, I did make one big mistake which made the job much more difficult. I started off with the big tube of caulk. I read the instructions and cut off the tip like it said, then started to squeeze the gun to start getting the caulk out. But it wasn’t coming. I kept sqeezing harder and harder but no luck. I began to think that the caulking gun was broken. So I took the tube out and realized that the caulk had started oozing out the back of the tube. So, I took a small putty knife, and started inserting the caulk with the putty knife and using my finger to smooth it out. This was not very accurate, so I ended up wiping a lot of caulk off of the tub and tile where I did not want it. I used the small tube to caulk around some of the smaller crevices like around the escutcheon and the soap dish. Nearing completion of the project, I looked at the instructions on the big tube caulk again and notice under number 2. Cut off tip to desired width. Puncture inner seal. !!!!! Man, now I get it. I had told Clare to start eating without me because I wanted to finish (having learned my lesson from the mudding and taping), and when I told her my story, she of course knew about puncturing the inner seal. Well, now I know, and you know what they say — “Knowing is half the battle.”

The wet wall after grouting and caulking

The wet wall after grouting and caulking