How to Grout a Mosaic Work of Art

Video Transcript

"It’s been twenty-four hours, I did this yesterday for the purposes of this demonstration and you can see the design here and I think it looks really cool. I did the front and I did the sides here and the next step is going to be the grouting process, which is what really holds the pieces in place. The glue sets them; the grout really holds them and keeps them permanently in place. Okay, I like to use colored grout because I think colored grout is a lot more interesting than just plain white grout and I match my grout color to my piece. So there is art involved in that you want to coordinate the colors, everything should look really complementary to each other and again that is where the art part comes in. You can go lighter grout, darker grout; I’m going to use a very neutral colored grout. This is a very dry grout, you can see and this particular grout is un-sanded, you can get sanded grout or un-sanded grout, this is un-sanded and I prefer working with this, it is smoother and I just really enjoy doing these projects with un-sanded grout. So this is the grout, water and we’re going to mix it to a constituency of thick oatmeal, so what I do is mix some water in, mix it up because all, because grout absorbs liquid differently, some grout. “That’s not making sense”, okay, so I’m adding a little more water, there was not quite enough water, so I’m going to add more water till I get this grout to the consistency that I want it. If I add too much water, if it gets too liquidly, I can add more of the grout to it so there is no harm, no foul, you can’t really make a mistake on this, and what I do, is I mix it up and I let it stand for about five minutes, five or ten minutes until it’s really a nice thick constituency, it will thicken as it stands. If it stands too long it will harden like cement, but this looks like it’s going to come out to a perfect consistency. All right, the grout is ready to go, the surface is all prepared, I have plastic underneath it so as not to make a mess all over the place. I apply my grout with a brush, I don’t get my hands in the grout because grout is very abrasive to the hands so avoid getting the grout on your hands, if you prefer to use gloves that’s not a bad idea, I just use the brush to apply it. And now I’m going to lob this grout onto my piece like that and take my brush and fill in the spaces. And again, this is what is going to keep the shards in place, is doing this. Because when this dries and this dries very quickly it hardens up and keeps everything right where it is supposed to be. This is the fun part, this is like playing with clay doing this, it’s like being a kid making a mess, but a neat mess. Okay so you can see that I am filling in all the places, I don’t want to get it on my flowers so I’m going to use a smaller brush right around the flower, but I’ll be wiping this off while it is still soft so anything I get on it, I’ll be able to wipe off. The smaller brush works really nice too, because it really gets in between the pieces. When this is all done being applied I let this sit for five to ten minutes, maybe longer, depends, depending on the moisture content in the air it can take a little longer to dry sometimes, but then I am going to wipe all the pieces off, I’m going to wipe the grout off the shrouds so that it is only in the gaps. Well I’ve spread it out and I’ve actually taken off some of the excess with the brush to allow it to dry because I’m going to eventually wipe it off of all the shards but in the meantime I’ve taken a brush and brushed off the excess and the next step is going to be getting rid of everything that is on top of the shards and just leaving the grout in between. "