Grout. Now there’s an exciting subject. Nothing like staying at home on a Friday night and sealing your grout. Hoo Boy! Here in lies the problem. Grout is a really boring part of life and one of those things that nobody ever thinks about. That is until your grout cracks and leaks. Then you’ve got something to think about.

   Our bathroom project was to be one main bathroom in the house. The day before we were to start, however, the shower in our master bath decided to leak through the cracked grout, through the subfloor, throught the downstairs ceiling and on to the basement floor. As Sam from Qunatum Leap would say, “Oh boy!” So needless to say we started on that bathroom first.

   The culprit was cracked grout. Nope not very big cracks, had to look fairly closely with a flashlight just to see them, but water sure found its way through the cracks. It was kinda like an NTSB inspector at the scene of a plane  crash as we looked for a reason behind the leaks. It was obvious after the fact, but hard to tell before. I’m certain this grout, which was 43 years old, was sealed maybe once or twice, and easily not within the last ten years. Hard to say for certain, but proper maintenance and sealing more often would likely have saved us from replacing all the tile in the shower.

   Yep we ripped out all the tile, the old and partially rotted drywall and took it down to bare studs. Let it dry out really well, put up new cement board and new tile as well as a new fixture and all is great again. It’s a good ending, but still not a job I was planning on doing.

   The moral of this story is to look at your grout, however boring it may seem. Seal it regularly, keep it clean and look for cracks. It’s entirely easier than replacing a whole shower.

-Clark