If At First You Don't Succeed

There's always a way to fix it.

We're still working on the dining room and we've made some huge steps forward.  One of those was to finally get the tile in our entry foyer grouted.  Unfortunately, once again, things didn't turn out quite as advertised.

We picked a nice charcoal grout color.  Let me be honest here - I have two Labrador Retrievers.  It doesn't matter WHAT color grout we use, it will be dirt color eventually.  I barely have the time to brush my dogs' teeth. I most certainly don't have the time or desire to use a toothbrush on my grout to keep it white.

Anyway, back to the charcoal grout.  As you can see, the color we picked and the color we got are vastly different.

Now there's a good possibility that it was user error, but nevertheless, if I wanted cement between my tiles, I would have asked for cement.

So we set out to find some options to correct it.  They do make grout dyes, but not only did that seem sort of drastic, but a quick check of all the flooring stores in our area revealed that if you live in a 20 mile range of our house, the only color you can "dye" your grout is white or almond.  

However, one of the stores had some tile enhancer and it said that it would slightly change the color of natural tile and grout to the color that it appears when it is wet (in other words, it's not going to change white grout to black, but there's a good chance that it would change my cement grout to charcoal.)  We didn't have to worry about it changing the tile itself since it's ceramic and wouldn't absorb it.  

And just in case anyone wants to enhance their tile or grout, this is the product - TEC Ensealant.

It was easy to apply with a paintbrush

And then 10 minutes later, I wiped it off and like magic . . . 

. . . we have the charcoal grout we were supposed to have.

I love magic.