LESLIE: Lynn in Rhode Island’s got cleaning on the brain. How can we help? What’s dirty?
LYNN: (chuckling) Well, the shower tiles, you know, occasionally get that mold on them.
TOM and LESLIE: Mm-hmm.
LYNN: And I was wondering – someone once told me half Clorox, half water; which seemed to work well. But I wondered if that’s safe for the tiles or not.
TOM: Oh, you definitely can’t hurt the tiles.
LESLIE: You can hurt your hands first.
TOM: Yeah. You’re going to get your hands irritated and it might be tough to breathe in there but you’re not going to hurt your tiles.
You know, if you do that once a year it’ll really get in there and do a good cleaning, brightening job that would do it. But seriously, you have to have a very well-ventilated area and you have to use rubber gloves and certainly want to protect your eyes because you don’t want to get that solution into your eyes or under your skin. One of the ways that you might want to think about doing this though is getting a spray bottle and filling it up – I don’t know if I’d go 50/50 but I might go 25 percent bleach and 75 percent water – spraying it on there; letting it sit for a few minutes and then rinsing it off. It will brighten them up quite nicely.
LESLIE: Mm-hmm. And at this point, Lynn, once you get that grout to a clean enough state that makes you happy, if it’s super-bright and you’re happy with its progress, go ahead and put a sealer on that grout because that’s going to make it far more resistant to staining and cut your work down.
LYNN: Oh, OK. What type of sealer?
TOM: Silicone sealer. A silicone grout sealer.
LYNN: Oh, OK.
LESLIE: And you can even find an applicator in the home center, Lynn, that looks almost like a nail polish bottle with like a roll-y foam sponge on top. You just put the silicone grout sealer in there and then you can roll it on in between the – on grout lines so you don’t have to worry about getting it everywhere.
TOM: Yeah, all the guys that are listening going, “Oh, yeah, yeah. I know what that is.”
LESLIE: They’re like, “I know that one.” (Tom and Lynn laugh) “The nail polish bottle.”
LESLIE: Well, thank you very much. That’s very helpful.
TOM: You’re welcome, Lynn. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
Leave a Reply