Between the cracks

I absolutely love all the granite and tile in our new house. It's beautiful! But improperly installed tile/grout is no bueno.

We noticed this little crack where the granite meets the tile during our inspection. And I'm going to have to apologize ahead of time for the quality of these pictures. It's REALLY hard to photograph in here. Wonky light, terrible shadows, enough said. (And as I'm typing this post I noticed the top crack! Adding that to the to-do list now!)

The inspector said it was just something that needed to be re-grouted/caulked and that it was just the house settling. I did a little more research (really just to figure out what grout to get) and apparently you are never supposed to have grout join 2 solid surfaces because of settling. Tile+Granite= 2 solid surfaces. So the crack was inevitable with the shifting of the house and water exposure.

I'm glad I did that research because had I just repaired the crack with more grout we would be facing this issue again in the very near future. Instead I grabbed a tube of this stuff. It's called Poly Blend and it's caulk for grout.

There were a couple of epic fails before getting to this point so lemme share.

One of the nightmares of moving into a new house is figuring out all the colors. Wall color, grout color, trim color... you know for touchups like this.

I needed to choose a grout color. Easy right? Wrong. Choices... decisions... headaches...like how the color chart was a never ending sea of grays, browns, and tans the length of my firstborn son.

By the way these little brochures are SUPER handy. Almost as handy as my paint deck.

I confidently chose the color that I thought our grout was (Oyster Gray), waltzed to home depot to purchase the grout/caulk and was completely defeated when the worker told me that color was only a special order... womp. He said it was highly unlikely that the builder spent the time to special order grout. So unless I wanted to take the risk of a special order, then he suggested finding the next closest color.

I came home with "Non-Sanded" Poly Blend caulk in Linen. I got home, quickly cut off the top of the tube, and got to work. Only to realize that I had just wasted $7 and felt totally defeated again.

See that glob above? The light glob that totally doesn't match the grout. Yeah that's the color I chose. To my defense it was a quick decision. A quick decision with 2 hungry kids. Not exactly thinking material.

So back to the drawing board.

Josh had gone through and circled the choices that were in stock, and I decided to go back (by myself with no hungry kids) and try to find another color. The biggest issue I was having was that the "Sanded" and "Non-Sanded" caulk in the SAME color looked different on the tube. So I had no idea what to believe. The brochure or the side of the tube?

This time I brought a picture of the tile/grout on my phone. I got the advice of an associate, and bought 2 more tubes. One in Delorian Gray, one in Light Smoke (it's funny because the first time we went when Josh circled the colors-light smoke wasn't in the store- that's why it's not circled). She suggested the gray and although I didn't think it was right, I did feel like there is a hint of gray in the grout so MAYBE she was right. I figured I had nothing to lose. After I got home and compared the 2 new colors to the grout I decided to give the Light Smoke a try. The gray just wasn't right.

Also instead of buying the "non-sanded" caulk, I went with the "sanded". I didn't like how the non-sanded was just like regular caulk. It just didn't look/feel right there. Once I started working with the sanded caulk I fell in love. It looks and feels so much like grout but it has the stretchyness of caulk.

Then I just applied like I would regular caulk:

I ran a line of it and then went back and smoothed it over with my finger. I dipped my finger in water and kept a paper towel close by. Then I went back and wiped any excess from the counter and touched up the line with my pinky!

Here it is done, and looking a little light, but it always dries darker! Not going to lie I was a *little* worried that it wouldn't dry darker but my fingers were crossed! I went to sleep hoping to wake up to darker results!

And just like I thought- it dried darker!

Overall, this project took 2 weeks of thought and about 10 minutes of work! I'm so glad to have this finished and knowing what color our grout is is such a relief. 

Now on to use the rest of the tube on our shower and the kids tub/shower!