Whether you are preparing your home for sale in Allawah or Wolli Creek, your commitment to clean is an integral part of the process of property styling St George. Among the common issues homeowners face when the time comes to sell their homes is the notorious way grouted tile can make an otherwise gorgeous bathroom look lacklustre. The tiles can remain beautiful for decades, but the grouting that holds the tiles in place can become stained and ugly over time.

Here we will present a few ways to make the grout that holds your bathroom together sparkle again. Treat it as if the sale price of your house depended on it. It just might.

Forewarned is Forearmed

Tiling can be a beautiful, even artistic element in your house. It can also be a pain in the ankle to keep up. If you are moving into a home with lots of tiling, understand that you will need to adopt a daily and weekly maintenance schedule to keep it looking good.

If you have tiles in your shower, for example, you need to squeegee the water off the tiles after your daily shower. Following this, you will need to spray the tiles with a spritz of daily shower cleaner following the manufacturer’s instructions.

Weekly, your job is to make a paste of baking soda and water, then use it to scrub the grout with a toothbrush or grout brush. If you fail in these regular maintenance tasks, you will most likely end up with stained grout.

Rejuvenating Stained Grout

Even if you’ve been faithful in your grout cleaning duties, you may begin to see your grout fading to gray over time. In such cases – and especially if you’re planning to sell your home and want top dollar for it – you’ll need to take some more labour intensive steps.

The baking soda/water paste can be upgraded to baking soda/hydrogen peroxide if your grout is only modestly stained. Be careful here, though. If you’ve used vinegar to clean your tiles, make sure to rinse it off well before you apply the peroxide fix. NEVER mix hydrogen peroxide and vinegar together in one container or area. The resulting chemical, peracetic acid, can harm you AND your tiles when these cleaners are mixed together.

Badly Stained Grout

This is where the stain removing power of bleach comes in. Let us say first of all that chlorine bleach can be dangerous to use. Its unpleasant fumes can be a big problem if you are trying to clean with straight chlorine bleach in an enclosed area like a small bathroom or a shower recess. Keep the windows and doors open when you’re bleaching grout.

Pick up an oxygen-powered bleaching agent – you’ve probably seen it advertised on television – its name usually begins with “OXY” and it is meant to make white things white without chlorine. Mix it according to manufacturer’s directions. Apply it with a brush to the grout, allow it to stand 15 or 20 minutes, and then rinse with clean water.

Bleach Pen – bleach pens are great for small areas, but could take days to apply to your entire shower or bathroom floor.

Grout Renewal – When you’ve established that your grout just won’t clean, it may be time to get tough. Products sold as ‘grout re-newer systems’ can be found at your favourite hardware or building supply store. They serve to recolour the grout and come in a number of different shades. You can go lighter or darker depending on your preference and it’s an easy DIY project.

Replacing Grout

If your tiling is truly suffering from old age, it may be time to re-do it. Sure-fire signs that something like this needs to be done is if you see any tiles loose or getting loose, and the grout cracking or peeling away. Serious wall damage can happen if you ignore this. Moisture will get behind loose tiles or cracked grout and cost you a bundle of money.

If retiling or regrouting is your only option, you may want to call in a professional to do the work. They can do it faster and more efficiently. The end product will look good as new.

If you are planning to sell your home and your grout looks bad, the entire bathroom looks shabby. Your property styling St George professional will tell you that if you cannot clean it, put down a new layer of clean with the grout renewal system. It will pay off for you in a big, big way.

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