Searching for the perfect shade of gray

Seven paint samples so far...... I may go through all 50 shades of gray before I find the right one! ;)

Want to see it on the walls?  <-- clickey!

Painting grout on the kitchen floor

As the kitchen re-remodel continues, the only thing left in my kitchen that I truly hate are the floors. HATE them! There isn't anything really WRONG with them, though, so I can't really justify the cost to replace them. They just aren't my style.

Photographic evidence (I haven't painted over the green yet - more about the search for the perfect grey later!):

 

This is the other side of the kitchen. It was probably used as "eat in" at one point, but since the dining room is right next to it, that doesn't make much sense. So it's a giant waste of space..... with ugly floors.

They are white-ish with dirt colored splotches on them and black grout. Is it that they never look dirty or they always look dirty?? Either way, I am not a fan.

So after much deliberation about rugs or other possibilities, I landed on this fabulous product: Polyblend Grout Renew

What is it, you ask? It's a miracle in a bottle, that is what it is!! It's a paint and sealer specifically made for grout. It has terrific reviews, so I was eager to give it a try. I bought the color "linen" and picked up a few other supplies:  Two small soft toothbrushes, some rubber gloves, and a squeeze bottle like mustard comes in (found it in the kitchen section of walmart).

To apply you just squeeze some of the Grout Renew in the grout line. Then you brush it in with the toothbrush, and wipe off any excess with a paper towel. That's IT!  I used a child's toothbrush like this one, since it was small and about the width of my grout lines:



Then I put the Grout Renew in a squeeze bottle like this one, so I could squeeze a nice clean line. I later learned that I just really needed to do a dashed line, rather than a solid one. A solid line was just too much and I ended up wiping most of it off!





Some knee pads will come in handy, too!






 
It took about 5 hours to do all of my kitchen:

So you don't have to scroll up to compare, here's a good before (on top) and after (on bottom):

Can you believe it?! I no longer hate my floors!!

I do need to do a second coat. Covering all of the black up with a light tan isn't an easy thing to do, so it will take one more coat before it looks "done" up close. But you can obviously tell the difference with just the one coat! (If I weren't changing the color so drastically, I'm sure one coat would have worked fine.)

I don't know much about the longevity of this product, but again, the reviews were excellent. I'll report back in a few months and let you know how it has held up to our pets and foot traffic.