Bleaching and Sealing Grout

One of my least favorite things in our house is the tile in our kitchen. It is very nice porcelain tile...so it would be stupid to replace it. But it is just not my style, I don't think it matches the kitchen very well, and it shows the dirt like crazy! {not a good thing when you have two dogs and a toddler}

I stay on top of it as much as possible, but my biggest gripe is the grout. The builder used white grout, which should brighten it and make it seem as clean as possible. However he did not seal the grout, which you should do, so it is constantly getting dirty and making the whole kitchen seem dingy.

Every few months I clean and bleach the grout, but had yet to seal it because I am very lazy busy.  But the other night I decided enough was enough.  I was going to bleach and seal the grout one last night!

{yucky, yucky grout}

I have bleached the floor several times, and a few different ways, and this seems to be the quickest and most effective way for me.  First I vacuum the whole floor.  Then I break out this bad boy and mop the whole area.

After the floor is clean, I take a whole bottle of this {and yes I use the entire bottle.}

I put a thin line of the Soft Scrub into every grout line and let it sit for about half an hour.  Then I take a steel brush similar to this one and scrape all the grout. 

I then take a wet rag and wipe all the bleach away.  I use my steam mop again to make sure all the bleach is up.  

Once this was all done I grabbed the grout sealant I had picked up. {not the exact one I used}

I followed the directions on the packaging and sprayed the sealant into all the grout lines.  It looked great and I was so happy to finally be done with this process!

Finished product

Looks pretty good!

I was very happy until I went to throw out the empty sealant can and realized I had bought counter and wall grout sealant and not floor sealant.  Ooops!  It does not hold up as well and it already seems that I will be repeating this process again soon.  But don't worry, I already got some floor grout sealant and will do the job properly this time!