How to Remove Grout Haze from Marble

Tiling with marble looks fantastic, but there are a few little tricks you need to know. Namely, seal that stuff once you've got it up on the walls PRIOR to grouting. If you don't seal, the grout will discolor your marble and you'll be angry.

Tip #2: don't try to use a normal grout haze remover product. It will scratch the ISH out of your marble and you'll be sad.

But how to address the grout haze? Ahhh haze. Anytime you tile and grout, a mysterious grout-y haze will be left behind. It looks basically like this:

Water will not cut it, and normal grout haze remover will leave it scratched to all get out. After some snooping around on the interwebs, I found this miracle stuff:

You basically spray it on as a foam and miraculously, 30 seconds later, using a microfiber cloth, you wipe it AND the grout haze off of your marble. Leaving it SO HAPPY! (Who knew tiling was such an emotional situation?) The difference is unreal.

Hazy:

Not Hazy:

Now that my tile was haze free, I had to seal it again with that green bottle of goodness up above, as well as address the angry spots on the drywall. Pink Caulk to the rescue!

Sanding and painting followed as well as a furious round of caulking. I am hoping to have a final before and after for y'all by the end of the week! Stay tuned!

Kitchen Renovation: Volume 2

The last y'all heard about our kitchen specifically was when we had the wall removed that separated the kitchen from the living room. And before that, it was when we renovated the kitchen ourselves for about $700. The view from our front door featured our Rustoleum Countertops and our DIY white subway tile with black grout.

As I've mentioned before, the lack of a pattern/knowledge of what in the world we were doing with the backsplash led it to look pretty janky.

So before we replaced our linoleum turned Rustoleum countertops with granite, we got busy removing the subway tile. And by "we" I mean LB.

The next day the granite guys showed up to do the template and a week later they were back with our dark grey granite in tow. It is shocking how much this granite looks from a distance like our old countertops. The functionality, feel, and look of it closer up, however, are completely different... in the best way possible.

As part of the granite install, we also got a bigger, deeper sink and a new faucet that I LOVE.

The day after the granite was in, we had the marble tile backsplash installed. We went with this marble which was only $6.86/ square foot. It cost us roughly $300 to do our entire backplash with marble. WAY cheaper than I had originally assumed.

OH! And at the same time the marble was going up, we had the crown molding painted (it was just primed before).Our house, for over a week at this point, was a total disaster zone:

But here is a sneak peek at what the granite with the marble look like all married together. This was before I did a round of my newly discovered haze removing technique for marble (stay tuned for a post on that tomorrow), and before I did the spackling and sanding and painting on the walls.

So stay tuned for a full before and after kitchen post and just be excited that our kitchen is basically done. (I am dreaming of you, french door fridge).