One Room Challenge: Week 6 – Black Grout

I’m keeping this week’s One Room Challenge update short and sweet because it’s crunch time! After celebrating my anniversary, birthday, and Halloween in the past couple of weeks, I’ve got to put my head down and really get to work. So today, I’m just popping in to show you what grout color I ended up choosing – black!

Well, technically, it’s charcoal. I’m using the premixed grout that is recommended to be used with the SimpleMat Tile Setting Mat. But a quick word to the wise, according to the SimpleMat instructions, I was supposed to grout the tile within 24 hours of installing. And I waited days…..because my birthday, and my son came home from college for a visit, and Halloween. But I can absolutely see why they say to grout within 24 hours. The tiles stay in place but if you don’t use spacers (which I didn’t) after a few days the tiles start to move a little. It’s like gravity starts to wreak havoc or something. It wasn’t too bad, thank goodness. I mean, none of the tiles came off or anything. But I ended up adding spacers in a couple of places to get tiles lined back up correctly. And if I had grouted when I was supposed to, I could have saved myself the headache and mild panic attack. 😉 So you know, follow directions. 😉

Anyhow, as I said, it’s crunch time, and I’m very behind! Don’t judge the above photo as I still have to clean up the grout lines a bit more and dehaze the tile. But I was so pumped to share the grout color I chose, so I’m rolling in with this quick progress photo.

I opted for black grout because I want the black pencil mold to look continuous. I didn’t want white grout to highlight the spaces between each piece because those lines don’t match up with the subway tile, and I felt like that might look a bit too distracting. I love that with black grout the pencil mold looks like one solid piece when there are actually 5 pieces of ceramic mold in each line.

Now to finish the grouting of the wall behind the door, remove the sink and tile and then grout that wall……and then bring in art and accessorize. I’m the slowest tiler ever, and grouting is my least favorite. But gosh, I’m loving how this little powder room makeover is coming along!

Hoping to be back with a much more fun and juicy update next week! Until then, check out how all of the other One Room Challenge participants are doing.