On Jun 19, 8:27 am, "EXT" wrote:
"Bob F" wrote in message

...



"1969Benz" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi all,

Just bought a house that was "refurbished" by the previous owner. I
think she did all the work herself, or with the help of a builder
friend. Unfortunately, now it's my responsibility to fix bits of it
up that weren't done properly. After a couple of weeks I started to
notice that the shower wall tiles, after a long-ish shower, were
showing grey watermarks that started from the grout line and headed
toward the centre of the tile. Tiles are white by the way. The
watermarks varied in size from about thumbprint size to around double
that.

I've Googled for hours and been reading this newsgroup for the last 2
or 3 hours as well and am still not 100% sure how to proceed. And, I
should own up at this point, I've already removed ALL the grout (not
the caulk) in the shower and done it over once, including using a
paint-on sealer on the new grout a couple of days after the grout was
installed (?) - which didn't improve the problem!

It IS possible that I screwed up the mixing process for the (unsanded)
grout and made it too hard - it ended up sort of like putty and I was
told it should have been more like toothpaste.

My question is this: Should I attempt to do the job again, assuming I
can do a better job mixing the grout, or is there a bigger problem?

I'm not a home-handyman by any stretch of the imagination, but as this
is my first house I wanted to have a go at fixing a problem myself. I
haven't seen any other post about re-tiling or re-groutingthat
mentions watermarks (darkened areas) on the tiles themselves, only the
grout lines. I think the tiles are reasonably new, within the last 6
months or so. The watermarks disappear after a few hours, but I still
worry that it can't be good for them to be appearing in the first
place.

Tile should not absorb water. These must be some wierd tile.

If the tile is real cheap stuff that the previous owner bought on price
alone, then the tile will absorb water. I have seen some of this junk, it is
thin, soft and porous, made in some third world country to no standards.
Certainly not hard pressed like the good stuff. Rip it down.

Thanks for the responses guys. I'm in Australia, don't know if that
makes any difference to the tile sourcing debate.

I did try to seal the grout after a couple of days, but I recently saw
another post about the fact that sealing on a vertical surface doesn't
necessarily work that well.

I assumed that the leakage was occurring along the sides of the tiles,
where the grout and the tiles meet. Even when I laid the grout, the
moisture from the mixture caused this same darkening effect on all the
tiles. The tiles are ceramic on top but I seem to remember they
looked kind of terracotta-ish along the sides?? Does that sound
normal? Also, the same tiles have been used to do the whole room, not
just the shower cubicle itself. Actually, the same tiles are used in
the main bathroom on every wall, including the shower.

I just wanted to reiterate that I believe the water is getting into
the tile along the side, not from the back, as the darkening
(watermarking) only appears along the tile edges next to and touching
the grout lines.

Cheers,
Ben. (with heart in mouth)