Bathroom Makeover: Chapter Five

I hope you all had a good weekend. I spent last week fighting the crowds at SXSW. Now that the event is over, I’m stuck in bed at home fighting a cold that I picked up somewhere along the way. Ugh, being sick on a weekend is the worst! There are so many more productive things that I could be doing right  now.

Anyway, while I’m resting I’ll bring you a bit more up to speed on the bathroom makeover. Last week I showed you a photo of the bathtub after we had bleached and re-caulked the area. We made a ton of progress but there were still little tiles and grout lines that needed help. After searching the aisles of the hardware store for something that could help, I found this.

Using the grout coating pen was really similar to using a white out pen. You press the tip a few times to start the paint flow and then you draw along the grout. There were two problems that I had using this tool. First, my grout was not bright white so it didn’t blend well ( I could’ve predicted this issue). Secondly, the coverage is not great. I needed to go over dark spots of the grout repeatedly and I still ended up with uneven coverage. Here’s the best “during photo” that I have.

The above portion of the grout in this photo has been painted with the grout pen. The lower darker lines have not. When you look at the painted portion, you can see a messy-looking finish. Overall it helped mask the stains, but if I had to rate this product I would probably give it a C. It helped, but I was unimpressed by the messiness.

After painting over some of the grout and using a razor blade to scratch off bits of mildewed caulk that the previous owners had spread over the actual tiles, things were looking much much better.

Has anyone else tried a grout pen? Do you have any techniques that might help for next time?