Colouring

We recently received a request from the Manchester headquarters of a global engineering and construction company which was founded in 1911 and now operates in over 160 countries. The company contacted us because they were keen to restore the tiled walls and floors in 20 different toilets and kitchens throughout the offices.

It would be a big job, but we were more than happy to respond to the enquiry. We agreed a complimentary visit to the office for us to test clean one of the floors to show what kind of results could be achieved. The management team at the offices was very impressed with the results of the test clean and asked us to complete the whole job.

There was talk of replacing some of the grout completely and I explained that it would be less expensive and time consuming to restore the discoloured grout through cleaning and recolouring and they were happy to let us proceed on that basis.

Cleaning Discoloured Grout Lines

As there were 20 different rooms to clean and recolour, our team worked in a couple of rooms at a time to ensure firstly, that we got the job done in time and secondly, that we wouldn’t disturb the normal operations of the offices.

The process was as follows. To clean the grout, we used a strong mix of Tile Doctor Pro Clean, a strong Alkaline-based cleaner which reliably gets the job done in situations where most run-of-the-mill cleaners won’t. We applied the Pro Clean to the grout lines and tiles and left it to dwell for about 10 minutes. We then scrubbed the grout lines with specially designed grout brushes and followed by cleaning the tiles with a black scrubbing pad fitted to our rotary machine.

After scrubbing the tiles and grout, we rinsed and removed all the dirty water and cleaning solution with a wet vacuum. We repeated the rinsing process several times to make sure all chemicals were neutralised. Similar cleaning techniques were used to clean the tiles on the walls, but the walls took a lot longer to complete as the tiles were much smaller and therefore had a greater number of grout lines. When all the cleaning process was finished, we left the tiles to dry until the next day.

Recolouring the Wall and Floor Grout Lines

To recolour the grout lines, we used the Grout Colourant from Tile Doctor’s own range. Available in ten different colours, this is a brilliant product as it rejuvenates and also seals the grout. The fact that the colourant is epoxy based will also make future maintenance easier, as you can just wipe off the dirt.

For the floor grout lines, we used the Natural Grey colourant and for walls we used White. The application of the colourant is simple yet quite laborious when working in large rooms. After finishing, we wiped off any excess product.

Overall, it took us two weeks to complete all the work but I think you will agree from the photographs that all toilets and kitchens look completely rejuvenated. We got lots of good feedback from the people who work at the company. They all stated that the toilets and kitchen look like new and even asked us about restoring grout in their own homes.

Commercial Toilets and Kitchen Grout Restoration at International HQ Manchester