Protecting Grout on a Ceramic Tiled Kitchen Worktop

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Following a referral from customer which is always nice to have, we paid a visit to a house in Brighton where the owner was having difficulty keeping their ceramic tiled kitchen worktop clean. As you can see from the photograph below the glazed ceramic tiles were in reasonable condition, it was the grout that was the problem; this is not unusual as glazer ceramics are very hard wearing but the top layer of grout is in fact porous and will trap dirt and become discoloured if not sealed.

Grout Cleaning

There were two ways this job could have been tackled, the first being to remove the top layer or grout using the flat blade of a screwdriver and then re-grout. It was a reasonably large area of worktop so this would have taken some time. The second and simpler option is to use a heavy duty tile and grout cleaning product such as Tile Doctor Pro-Clean and that is exactly what we did, it also has the added advantage of cleaning the tiles at the same time.

The Pro-Clean was diluted with water and then left to dwell on the tile and grout for about ten minutes before being scrubbed in by hand with a stiff brush. For the wall tiles the solution was decanted to a spray bottle and sprayed onto the tiles, the combination with air makes it lighter and more able to stick to a vertical surface.

The tiles were then washed down with water and any stubborn areas re-treated with more Pro-Clean and elbow grease, it wasn’t long before the tile and grout was looking like new again.

Sealing Grout

Now glazed Ceramic tiles don’t need to be sealed as the glaze provides an effective barrier however as I mentioned before the top layer of grout is porous and will attract dirt over time and should be sealed, especially considering kitchen worktops are used to prepare food. Tile Doctor have a range of sealing products any of which will seal grout however in this case I used Grout Seal and Go which comes in a spray bottle.