Grouting Stepping Stones

Video Transcript

"I'm Cooie Grey-Lavin, and in this clip I'm going to show you how to grout mosaic stepping stone. We're at the grouting stage right now. We've picked our materials, we've glued them on with thin set, and we've let it cure 24 hours. So, now we're ready to grout. Grouting is pretty messy and it's also a little hard on the hands, so I always wear rubber gloves. And I cover my table with plastic or old shower curtains. The grouting, mixing the grout is similar to mixing the thin set. It's water, it's the grout, and you mix it to the consistency of peanut butter. Grout is not something you want to breathe in, so I generally do all my mixing outside, or I use a mask for it. Any grout that; you can use any grout that you find in any of the hardware stores, tile stores. I prefer sanded grout. Unsanded grout is a little harder to work with. It's a little pastier. We've let it rest for 15 minutes, so we're going to re-stir it. And then, the way I do it is I literally just take a handful and smear it on. With grout, you're always working in a circular motion, and that gets all the grout in between each of the tiles, and it fills up each of the little cavities. You don't want any air pockets left. Grouting is about 1/3 putting on and about 2/3 taking off. So don't worry about the mess to begin with, that's just how the process of grouting, we'll clean the tiles up later. What we're doing right now is just making sure we have all the crevasses? filled in grout in all the spots, the holes in between the tiles. Again, work in a circular motion. That gets all the pieces, all the holes filled up. And go around the edge and make sure that you've got a nice, flat surface on the edge. And when you've got it pretty well all filled in, you're going to let it sit for another about 10 or 15 minutes. It really depends on the humidity in the air. And what we're going to wait for is when I touch the grout with a finger, it comes off clean. That's dirty, so we have to wait a few minutes until it's not as sticky. Remember, when you mix your grout, you need to let it set for 15 minutes, then re-stir it, and then you can grout your mosaic. Remember to always work in circular motions to get all the air out of the grouted material."