Contractor who remodeled our bathroom used non-sanded grout between bathtub (acrylic) and first layer of tile. He said that he recommends that instead of caulk as caulk will be trapping moisture and grout is better against mold. Now, year after, I see the grout along bathtub cracking and mold appearing in it. So what should I do? I am thinking of scrubbing some loose grout and refilling. But should I use grout again or should I use caulk this time? If caulk, then what kind of caulk should I use? bathtub grout caulking caulk In all the shower installs I overseen, the company I worked for maintained that caulk is to be used in any inside corners except where excessive/standing water is. For example, caulk corners where tub and walls meet, and vertical inside corners where the walls come together. DO NOT caulk where the floor and walls meet, I personally seen caulk creep out of the joint after a week of use in a residence I worked on while I was finishing up the punch list.

Find a reputed mold/mildewcide to clean the joint after you clear all the old grout then allow to dry as long as possible and use a color matched caulk. This is available at Home Depot or at tile supply houses. It is available in sanded or unsanded. In theory, it may trap moisture, but when the tile is installed and the grout sealed, which should be the case, between the tile being water impervious and the grout has been sealed from moisture infiltration, the amount of water getting past both those points is very minor in my opinion, I read this is so elsewhere. To clean the joint of old grout, protect the tub with blue painters tape, maybe a few layers and use a razor knife to begin to V cut the grout out, again be careful the side of the razor knife will be rubbing very hard on the tub/tape and can wear through readily. There is a grout saw available at hardware stores, but they will cut a joint about 1/8" wide, most tile is set closer. If you use this, use a metal shield of some sort to protect the surface of the tub.

A large drywall knife (12") would work or a section of very thin gauge metal purchased from a hardware store where they sell small pieces of flat metal. Careful with this, it must be kept secure from moving or the metal will deposit gray marks on the acrylic. Tape it to the tub at the ends and let the metal go up to the face of the tile so any scratches is covered by the new caulk. To caulk, first the joint MUST be clean and dry, cut the tip to the size of the joint, and apply caulk. Homes For Sale Circleville WvLook as the caulk is exiting the tip to ensure the caulk is going INTO the joint, this is where the work is done by the caulk, This why it must be clean. Homes For Sale In Lafayette Village Annandale VaYes there will be caulk EVERYWHERE to a degree. Lg Air Purifier Kuwait

This is why I keep a 5 gal. bucket handy half filled with water and a rounded edge sponge to clean the surface. Paper towels won't last in the cleaning process, and it may gouge out the caulk if a folded corner of the paper towel goes awry. To clean the excess caulk, with the wetted sponge, squeezed the daylights out of it to get most of the water out of it. It is imperative you are not depositing too much water on the surface of the tile, it will weaken the caulk. You can clean the caulk from the surface completely leaving the caulk only in the joint and with the color matched caulk, it will look like the other joints on the wall. These caulks are specified to tubs and showers. Hope these tips from my experience doing caulking around tubs and showers help:Don't rush it or you'll be doing it again within a year or two. It might take two nights to get the old caulk all out. You want a job that will last. Clean out all the old caulk. Use a 1" paint scraper, razor blade scraper, knife, maybe high grit sandpaper so long as the part sanded will be caulked over.

Buy the most expensive Tub and Tile caulk you can find. You don't want to have to do the job again and $10 - $15 isn't much when you consider the aggravation of redoing it. Right before caulking saturate a portion of a clean cloth with rubbing alcohol and force it into the joint. Wipe it once from each direction to make sure its clean. Then let it dry. Cut the caulk tube diameter to the width of the average gap. Caulk the gap, not the tub or tile outside surface. The caulk needs to contact both inner surfaces, but for aesthetics, don't overlap the two outside surfaces more than about 1/8". Have a roll of toilet paper handy After caulking the gap along one wall, dip the smallest finger that will bridge the gap in rubbing alcohol and quickly and firmly wipe straight down the gap. If not suitable, wipe the finger with a piece of toilet paper, fold, discard, re-Hopdip finger in alcohol, and repeat. Make it a habit to keep your hands clean at all times or you'll end up with caulk in places you don't want it.

I've always heard that there should be a small gap between the tile and the tub, and that gap should be filled with silicone caulking. I found this video really helpful for getting a perfect bead of caulk around the bathtub. It involves setting up some tape to use as a straight edge, and using a plastic spoon to smooth the caulk (instead of the normal finger method). I've used this method and the caulking turned out perfectly. Your contractor is wrong. This joint should always be caulked with a silicone mold resistant kitchen/bath type caulk, as should the vertical inside corners of your tub walls. Make sure you clean out the grout joint completely and let it dry thoroughly so you have a clean surface to attach the caulk to. Then prepare to ignore it for around 15 years...Browse other questions tagged bathtub grout caulking caulk or ask your own question.How to clean up or remove mold in bathrooms: This document explains how to best to remove & prevent future mold contamination in bathrooms, including bathroom renovation tips - easy details that will help mold-proof your bathroom.

The article includes a discussion of steps in restoring loose, discolored, or moldy, damaged tile grout. Small amounts of mold can be removed simply by cleaning or removing infected materials, something most homeowners can handle. Use any household cleaner or bathroom cleaner to clean off mold from tile, grout, or other hard surfaces. You can use a fungicidal cleaner such as the product shown at left if you like, but any household cleaner, even plain soap and water will do fine. It's the cleaning that is important, not surface infection, when we're removing mold. Preventing future mold growth can be assured more reliably by fixing the conditions that invited it in the first place, rather than by relying on mold killing sprays. Bleach solution to clean off mold is not necessary - the object is to remove mold, not kill it. But since cleaning off surface mold may leave stains in the tile grout, you might prefer to bleach that surface anyway. If you are going to use bleach to clean mold anyway, perhaps for cosmetic reasons,

see MOLD CLEANUP with BLEACH for more advice. Before giving up on mold-stained grout or caulk in a bath, kitchen or other area, try first drying the stained area, then spraying it with a bleach-based tile cleaner. Let the cleaner sit on the surface for 24 hours before washing off the surface. As long as you are dealing with a ceramic surface, the spray won't damage the tile or marble and you will probably find that the stain diminishes or disappears completely. Two or three such treatments will usually remove just about all dark stains on grout or caulk in a bathroom or other area. Watch out: don't over-do it with straight bleach. The straight-bleach solution may be strong enough to damage building surfaces, and it's not normally necessary. You may find that moldy caulk just won't clean up - you'll need to cut and remove the old moldy caulk, clean the tile or tub surfaces thoroughly (we use alcohol), and re-caulk with a mold-resistant bath caulk. You may read that your bathroom caulk is "mildew resistant" which is funny since there is no mildew in buildings - mildew (a sub group of the larger group of molds) grows on living plants - unless you are growing grapes in the bathroom, it's mold, not mildew.

But forgive the sloppy language and buy mildew-resistant caulk anyway. Even when removing brown rust and water stains from japanese Shoji screens I never use straight bleach. The risk of damaging the material is just too great. For those delicate surfaces, copying the work of art conservators, I work with a the most gentle, dilute solution possible, with patience, even with a cotton swab in some situations. For paper and other delicate surfaces I use a dilute cleaner on a cotton swab and I watch for the stain to fade. Quickly I clean the treated area with clean water and gently pat it dry. For more expert advice on this topic see BOOK MOLD, CLEANING Badly damaged tile grout joints that have grout sections missing or loose will need to be cleaned more aggressively. You may need to use a grout saw to remove enough grout to re-grout the tile with a new grout mixture. Buy tile grout that is secure but stained (such as in my photo below) can be scrubbed, dried, and coated with a tile grout pen or if the tile grout joint has enough depth to accept a thin coating of caulk, ou can try using a mold-resistant silicone caulk in the stained joints.

Here we will illustrate the use of a white grout marking sealing pen to beautify stained bathroom tile grout. This approach works best where surface mold has been cleaned away and it will not work if there are leaks inside the wall cavity. The tile pen can seal hairline grout cracks, but it will not work well if the existing tile grout is not sound and securely in place. The Magic Tile Grout Pen is a lacquer coating that will seal stained or moldy tile grout leaving a white surface. As long as the tile grout staining was caused only by water (and airborne mold) exposure on the exterior or room side of the tiled wall, this approach works well, has proven durable (our sealed grout has not shown new staining in six years since this coating was applied). Watch out: however if there are leaks into the wall cavity there is risk of both hidden mold contamination in the cavity but also of early failure of any external or superficial treatment of discolored or moldy tile grout.

In that case you may need to remove the moldy materials, fix the leak, and then restore the wall. In the two photos above we illustrate applying the tile pen to a stained segment of tile grout in a bathroom in Poughkeepsie, New York. If you click to enlarge the image you'll see that my hand was not very steady and some of the white lacquer spread over the ceramic tile surface. I simply wiped the excess away (photo at above right), though may be smarter to avoid coating your thumb with white lacquer - a possible toxin. Wiping the lacquered magic tile pen coating with a tissue is a bad idea: you're likely to leave lint and paper stuck on the surface. If necessary use a lint-free cloth dampened with lacquer thinner to remove spill-over lacquer from your tile tune-up job. At Bathroom Vanity Cabinet Mold we explained how water running under or behind a bathroom vanity or sink base can cause hidden mold growth on the vanity back, under-side, and on the wall behind the unit.

Our two photographs just below show mold that was found on the chipboard vanity base back surface and on the drywall behind the vanity. The drywall behind the vanity looked bad enough that we explored the wall cavity to be sure that additional demolition above the moldy drywall itself was not needed. Here we show the underside of the bathroom vanity cabinet. At the top of the photo, in particular, you can see that the chipboard vanity side was swollen and damaged by water that had passed along the bathroom floor. We decided to toss out this vanity base rather than try to clean and repair it. Placing our new bath sink vanity base upside down, we sealed the bottom edges as well as all other un-coated surfaces on the vanity back (and front kickboard) before the new unit was installed. We continued mold-proofing this bathroom with the details listed just below. After cleaning up a moldy bathroom, or when renovating or when constructing a new bathroom, we take these steps to reduce future mold growth: