Yep, I may be crazy, but I've painted the grout in my shower. Black.
Why, you might ask? Because they were really, really, intensely, upsettingly boring white tiles, the cheapest of the cheap, and they offended me on a basic level.
So that's the why.
After I had such success with with refreshing the grout on the floor in here I was all geared up to do the shower, thinking it would be easy to pick up the same product in black and have at it. But alas, it was not to be. As usual, the God's of home decorating had decreed that the American market have access to every possible product in every colour under the sun, while us boring old Europeans have to make do with....white. If we're even lucky enough to get the product at all!
Gah! I just want one run through a Home Depot, one!!!!
Gah! I just want one run through a Home Depot, one!!!!
So, my options were a) Leave it as it was, 2) sell my first born child in order to pay to have some of proper product delivered from Amazon or, lastly) find something I had to hand that might work and give it a go.
I think we all knew how this was going down before I even started this post.
So, armed with the knowledge that the white grout paint I already had was so effective and I could just re-paint the whole thing white if it went terribly wrong, what I did was I grabbed my tin of chalk paint because it was black and runny and I thought it would soak into the grout quite well, and it did. I applied it the same way I did the one on the floor, using a sponge brush to push the paint into the grout lines and ending up with quite a lot of messiness on the tiles as well that would need to be wiped off later.
So, I merrily set to with my tin of paint and half an hour later I had a shower that looked rather pleasingly like some sort of graffiti installation.I actually quite liked it! As art though, not as a place for cleansing myself.
The black instantly looked better and I happily went off to spend my evening chasing my naked young around and trying to ensure that the ratio of food in bellies to on floor ended up heavier on the bellies side.
This is where things started to take a turn for the worse! I came back a couple of hours later ready to scrub the mess off and be left with lovely sparkling white tiles and sharp black grout...alas, it was not to be. Two hours of sweating, scrubbing, scraping and swearing like a particularly inventive sailor later I was left with clean tiles.....and gappy grout.
The paint was so thin that it dried really quickly, and by the time I came back to it it really didn't want to budge, so I had to damp it down and use a paint scraper on the bigger bits, then go back over with wire wool to get the smaller stuff, but the rough treatment didn't really sit too well with the actual grout lines and they were damaged in the fray.
So I took a couple of days to mutter dark things and glare accusingly at the shower every time I passed it, and then I felt up to getting back on the horse and sorting this mess out. So I grabbed the can of paint again, but this time I used a small artists brush that was just about as thick as the grout lines, and I worked quickly in sections, giving the paint a minute or two to settle before I went back with paper towel and wiped off the excess. It was a much easier, cleaner process, and it was all done in one hour.
After that I gave the whole thing a couple of days to cure while we used the other shower, and then I came back and went over the grout lines with a couple of coats of matte, water based varnish, giving each coat a couple of hours to properly dry before doing another.
So there you have it. It's seen nearly six weeks of use since I did this, and so far it's holding up very well. I'll update in a couple of months but I'm hopeful that it'll stand up to the abuse it gets!
What do you think? Am I crazy? It may not last but if it doesn't at least I can easily bring it back to white by painting over it with the grout renew I used on the floor. I really love the difference it makes to the bathroom, and I'm hoping to have more of this makeover to share with you soon.....if someone ever gets around to making me my cabinet/mirror *cough* Gavin *cough*.
So, I merrily set to with my tin of paint and half an hour later I had a shower that looked rather pleasingly like some sort of graffiti installation.I actually quite liked it! As art though, not as a place for cleansing myself.
The black instantly looked better and I happily went off to spend my evening chasing my naked young around and trying to ensure that the ratio of food in bellies to on floor ended up heavier on the bellies side.
This is where things started to take a turn for the worse! I came back a couple of hours later ready to scrub the mess off and be left with lovely sparkling white tiles and sharp black grout...alas, it was not to be. Two hours of sweating, scrubbing, scraping and swearing like a particularly inventive sailor later I was left with clean tiles.....and gappy grout.
The paint was so thin that it dried really quickly, and by the time I came back to it it really didn't want to budge, so I had to damp it down and use a paint scraper on the bigger bits, then go back over with wire wool to get the smaller stuff, but the rough treatment didn't really sit too well with the actual grout lines and they were damaged in the fray.
So I took a couple of days to mutter dark things and glare accusingly at the shower every time I passed it, and then I felt up to getting back on the horse and sorting this mess out. So I grabbed the can of paint again, but this time I used a small artists brush that was just about as thick as the grout lines, and I worked quickly in sections, giving the paint a minute or two to settle before I went back with paper towel and wiped off the excess. It was a much easier, cleaner process, and it was all done in one hour.
After that I gave the whole thing a couple of days to cure while we used the other shower, and then I came back and went over the grout lines with a couple of coats of matte, water based varnish, giving each coat a couple of hours to properly dry before doing another.
So there you have it. It's seen nearly six weeks of use since I did this, and so far it's holding up very well. I'll update in a couple of months but I'm hopeful that it'll stand up to the abuse it gets!
What do you think? Am I crazy? It may not last but if it doesn't at least I can easily bring it back to white by painting over it with the grout renew I used on the floor. I really love the difference it makes to the bathroom, and I'm hoping to have more of this makeover to share with you soon.....if someone ever gets around to making me my cabinet/mirror *cough* Gavin *cough*.
