So yesterday I went completely off the deep end. Damn near kilt myself with overwork.
Monday is vacuuming day. Check.
Tuesday is steam-mop day.
Well, it’s been quite some time since I steam-mopped the 1680 square feet of tile in this house. As a stop-gap, I’ve been wet-mopping the dirtiest floors, which usually are the kitchen, the hall, the dining room, and the living room. Wet-mopping doesn’t really get the floor clean; it just pushes the dirt around.
Steam-mopping lifts the dirt off the floor…within limits.
Yesterday, it became clear that the limit had been reached and surpassed long ago. Every microfiber rag I attached to the steamer — quite a few — came up tar-black. I figured I’d better go over the floors twice. Rags were still black, and by the time the job was done, the floor was streaky. Decided to run the steamer over the kitchen floor again. The result: streaks.
The floors were so filthy, the steam-mopper couldn’t clean them. The grout, which in fact is not grout but this paint-on “sealer” stuff Satan & Proserpine applied, in a light gray color called “oyster” (what were those people thinking?), had turned dark brown with dirt.
I’d already been thinking I needed to get down on hands and scrub the damn floors.
But hold the Simple Green, which I suspect of being part of the problem, it having been applied in the wet-mopping. Instead of detergent, I used clear water, a stiff scrub brush, a scouring sponge, and rags; for the grout, I applied DIY glass cleaner — a mix of alcohol, ammonia, vinegar, and water.
It worked. In fact, it worked swimmingly. Here’s a before…
(Click on the image for closer inspection.)
And here’s an after…
The problem was, it worked altogether too well!
The project quickly turned into an absolutely crushing job. With back and hips already hurting, hunkering down on hands and knees and applying all the weight and strength of your upper body to scouring tile and grout is not much fun. And it took hour after hour after pain-enhancing hour. The problem was, I couldn’t stop! The difference between the cleaned space and the still-dirty tiles was eye-popping:
And I knew that if I stopped, there was no way in Hell I would come back the next day to finish the rest of the floor. It was a matter of do the whole job now or don’t do it at all.
Making this manageable entailed scouring two rows at a time, crosswise across the room (that is, taking the shortest distance, which in this case was from that bookcase to the wall opposite it). After just two rows, the water would turn almost black:
Actually, I had to get up and change the water more than once per two-row cycle. But you get the idea…
Ugh. After scrubbing the kitchen, dining room, living room, and hall floors, I thought I was gunna die! It was about 5:30 by the time the last bucketful of brown water was poured down the drain and a giant pile of rags went into the washer. Since this project began in the middle of the morning, I’d been on hands and knees for about 6 or 7 hours.
Fell into bed around 6:30. Woke up at 10 p.m., swilled down some puréed ginger root in tonic water — both traditional muscle-pain remedies, since I’m allergic to aspirin, ibuprofen, & acetaminophen (it actually worked, believe it or not!) — got back to sleep around 1 a.m., and was out cold until 6 a.m.
By light of day, the floor looks awesome! It hasn’t looked this good since I moved in here. The clean floors make the rooms look a lot brighter and bigger. Very nice.
And all in all, today I don’t hurt an awful lot more than I did yesterday morning, before plunging into the crazy project. Which isn’t saying much…except that things could be worse. A lot worse.
Problem is, all that flooring represents, ohh….maybe a third to almost half the total square footage of tilework. There are still four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and the family room that need to be cleaned.
The remaining parts of the house were tiled by my guy, Mike the Bosnian Godfather. Of course, we couldn’t buy the same tile — it was long gone. But Mike found a much better grade of tile that, incredibly, picked up all the colors of Satan & Proserpine’s choice. Its surface, though textured to ape stone, is harder and less porous-feeling than S&P’s, so dirt dust-mops up more easily.
Mine, not theirs!
And I have better sense about grout than those two did: IMHO the grout for floor tiling should be the color of dirt at the outset. It’s actually a little lighter than I would have selected on my own, at Mike’s insistence — he felt true dirt-color would have contrasted too much with the existing tile’s off-white grout.
But still, it’s dark enough that it doesn’t look just terrible after five or six years of wear and tear. I’m thinking that, at least for the nonce, I can go over it several times with a new mop-head dipped in clear, unadulterated water. If and when I work up the energy, I’ll scrub the tiles in the office (Cassie and I spend most of our time in the kitchen and the office) and then let the rest of it be.
Homeownership. What a joy!
😀
Ugg! – now THERE is a job you should have hired someone else to do – really Funny – are you TRYING to cripple yourself?
LOL! Part of the reason the floors are like this is because once I did hire some women to clean. They smeared undiluted Simple Green concentrate all over the floors!
If you want a job done right, you pretty much have to do it yourself.
We have Mexican tile too. Luckily, Mr FS does the floors. I’ll send him over. (We may have lower standards, however.)
I used NuGrout Colorant to color the grout in my kitchen. My floor looks fantastic! The best part is I saved a bunch of money since I didn’t have to re-grout the tiles. My wife LOVES the outcome! You can find out more about these products at http://www.nugrout.com.
I think Satan and Proserpine used something similar on the floors and kitchen counters, which they installed themselves. My tile guy said they did a good job on their project, which covers the hall, dining room, living, room, and kitchen. The stuff they used is called “Spectrum.” Unclear whether Nugrout is the same kind of product; the Nugrout site says their stuff “penetrates deep into grout” The stuff S&P used lays on the surface — the tile dude compared it with latex paint, although Satan described it as a “sealer.” It has worn off in a few places but by and large it’s very tough.
I would try this in an inconspicuous corner hidden by furniture first. If you like the effect, it’s an inexpensive fix for tired, use-begrimed grout…an awful lot better than regrouting!
The floors you see in these photos do have the Spectrum product on the grout. Scouring them hard with a scrub brush did not harm the stuff, and in fact it cleaned up quite nicely.