Taking Grout from Dark and Dingy to White and Bright

What a jam-packed weekend we had!  We celebrated Chris's birthday, shopped 'til we dropped, had family pictures taken and friends over for dinner. Since Chris's birthday was Saturday, one of my unspoken gifts to him was zero house projects--so I squeezed this one in Friday afternoon during Greta's nap.  For two and a half hours of work and $12, I'd say this project produces a big bang for your buck. Essentially, I painted the dingy, dark grout in the laundry room white. Kapow:

We were not ready to replace the tile floors in here.  A few of you suggested getting peel and stick tiles--which we looked into, but because these floors slope down to a drain, peel and stick tiles aren't recommended--they are best for level floors and we'd hate to pour money into something that might now be suited for our space.  Instead we committed ourselves to making the tile in our space look as good as it could.  Enter this Grout Renew that we picked up at Home Depot for just under $12.

They had five or six different colors and I went for the whitest one they had, "Snow White." This product first came on our radar two weeks ago when I was looking for the best ways to clean grout.  This blog and this blog both used this same product with great results.  We were sold.

First, we cleaned our floors and our grout lines really well with soap, water and magic erasers.  The Grout Renew goes on like paint--thankfully!  I was worried with our grout so dark, that we wouldn't get results like the examples we loved, but we did. Woot.

Here's the basic play by play. I started behind the door and worked my way up to the back wall and then back so I could work myself out of the room.  The bottle recommends letting things dry for 24 hours, but in my experience, it dried a lot quicker!  Word to the wise, work in small sections. A tile at a time was a good rhythm for me.

I chose to pour the product into a squeeze bottle with a small tip at the end for better aim.

When filling the grout line, you don't want to fill it--make more of a dotted line or you are going to have more clean-up to do and the clean-up takes the most time.  Just a little bit will do.

Some people recommend using a child's toothbrush to spread the paint (I'm just gonna call it what it is)--tried that.  It got out of the lines so much more, which meant more wiping, which translates into--say it with me--more time.  I discovered a Q-tip was a great width to move things around while still (for the most part) staying within the grout line.

After I spread the paint, I took a damp cloth and cleaned up my edges.

Aaannddd....repeat.

Even though this tile isn't my favorite, I don't hate it anymore. Which is 'uuuggeee.  It feels so fresh and so clean (clean) and ready for some baseboards, don't you think?! Onward!

Has anyone else attempted the same thing or refreshed their floors in some other way? Heck, we even toyed with the idea of painting the entire floor at one point.

Psst...See how the room turned out here!