Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Bathroom floor

I grouted tonight.... waiting for it to dry before one last wipe before bed.  As I was prepping the floor I noticed something with the mortar in between the tiles that I didn't like.  I hope it's nothing, but I can't help but think that it could be a big problem down the road.  I ended up using two different bags of mortar because I had a bunch left over from previous "jobs".  2 half bags, one was white, and the other grey.  They were both the same "type" (Polymer Modified Mortar), but different brands, which wouldn't matter.  The grey bag was much older than the white mortar.  I think about 2 years, actually, when I did the kitchen floor in the old house, or possibly when I did the back splash.  I didn't think it would be a big deal.  It was never wet, or anything, and it mixed up ok. It trowelled on fine...  but tonight when I was cleaning up the grout lines, the grey mortar was very soft compared to the white.  In some cases it seemed to just fall apart and turn to dust when I scraped it, or if I smashed a little ball of it on the floor.  This should NOT be happening, and it's making me very nervous that all of the grey tiles are going to pop off some months or weeks down the road.  The mortar should be very hard, like cement.
I suppose I should Google mortar and shelf life, but I don't want to see the answer I don't want to hear right now.  Maybe tomorrow, or next week.

This is what it looks like after two wipes.... a few more to go!  But not tonight.

Hopefully everything will be fine, and I won't have to go back and redo it. THAT would SUCK!!  Time will tell....

1 comment:

  1. Oh, I reeeally hope you don't need to redo it. That would completely SUCK! Fingers crossed! (can't believe the film still on it after 2 washes! Looks so grey, like it can't possibly be black!)

    ReplyDelete