Help! I accidentlly bleached my grey grout

[littlemisssunshine]

We just finished a huge expensive reno on our master bedroom and bathroom. We have gorgeous dark slate gray tiles in the shower with matching dark grey grout. I went to clean the shower for the first time and like a big dummy, grabbed my Tilex with bleach. So now I have splotches of white grout amid my pretty grey grout.

What are my options for fixing this? 

[crispnclean]

Oh that stinks!

I would imagine it would eventually get dirty and look grey again. Most lighter grout will eventually do this.

That's all I know of!

[sierramist03]

Home Depot makes a grout paint you could paint it back to gray.

[littlemisssunshine]

Jan 18, 2013 12:26:46 GMT -5 sierramist03 said:

Home Depot makes a grout paint you could paint it back to gray.

I tried this in a hall bathroom with really stained white grout and got awful results. It peeled off, took multiple coats to get decent coverage, and just looked crappy. I'm scared to try it on a brand new shower. 

Is it possible to grout over existing grout? Just a thin layer to get the color back? 

[ktzmoh]

I'd call the tile guy to come back, remove the affected areas and regrout. I think it's possible to remove grout, but I wouldn't trust myself to do it.

[emoflamingo]

I'd call the tile guy and then throw out that cleaner.

[FoxInFiji]

Oh that stinks.

No you can't put a thin layer of grout over existing grout. Grout paint sucks and doesn't work like the pp mentioned. You can buy grout stains but they are difficult to match to the rest of the existing grout. You might want to try that or just live it with and hope it darkens. I would try calling the tiler and get the name of the grout manufacturer. You can call them directly and see what kind of product they recommend.

Removing grout is difficult, time consuming, and can easily damage your tiles especially if they are real slate which is very porous and chips easily.

You should only use pH neutral cleaners on real slate. Odds are you don't own a single cleaner that meets those requirements so look into that before you do any more cleaning! Also you'll need to seal and reseal the slate often as it is very porous and in a shower. Every six months would be a good place to start. You need to make sure your cleaners aren't too harsh to remove that sealer as well. Hopefully you don't have hard water or minerals in your water as those can be very hard to remove with just pH neutral cleaners.