Customer Reviews

Grout-Aide Grout and Tile Marker (White)-Set of 2

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Look, you want perfect? Get a masonry saw, grind all the old grout out and put down new.

Good luck. Hope you have lots and lots of time.

These pens are the next best thing.

They are indeed a little tricky to use, but a little practice - try being patient for two minutes, people - and the paint flows smoothly. Also, figuring out how to make the pen work in the first place would be much easier if they'd explain it to you better. But don't get frustrated and eventually an adult of average intelligence really ought to be able to grasp it.

As for the results, they are very nice, but you need to do two things:

First, clean the old grout. I don't care what anyone says, you can't paint over loose dirt and grease and expect paint to stick. Not gonna happen, not on your walls, not on your car and not on your grout. You don't have to go wild, it doesn't need to be anything near perfect, just get up the loose dirt and grease. If this seems like too much effort, see the first line of this review.

Second, and they might tell you this but I get why they don't, if you want the new finish to last go to your hardware store and buy a small bottle of grout sealer. Again, any reasonably intelligent adult ought to be able to figure out that if you put a stripe of what is basically white paint on your floor and then everyone in the house walks on it a few times a day for a month, guess what happens? It gets dirty. Like any other colored finish - paint, ink, whatever - it does not repel dirt and grime and is not impervious to being scuffed up. Duh.

(In fact, the reason why your grout looks crummy now is that the grout sealer the installer put down got worn off and you didn't recoat it like you're supposed to. If you had done that then your floor would still look good and you wouldn't be reading this or shopping for a cure. So why all these people think they can now skip that part is a mystery. It's not magic, people: sealed grout doesn't stain. Unsealed grout does. What part of "re-coloring the grout" translates to "now I don't ever have to worry about sealing it"? Hello?)

Take a small paint brush and go over the newly-refinished grout with a thin coat of sealer. Really simple and quick. See - stop me if I'm going too fast here - grout sealer is designed to repel dirt, water and grease on grout and protect the color, making it easier to clean your floor.

As for the results, like a lot of things if you get down on your hands and knees and look very closely you can tell that it's a coating. So don't invite guests who tend to crawl around on the floor. Otherwise, it looks just great.

One thing - if you slather it on too thick it will, like a paint, make a heavy coat which will tend to look smooth to the eye. Grout is a little rough (it normally has sand in it) and if you lay this stuff on too heavy it makes it look like you caulked the joints instead of grouting them.

My advice would be to experiment. Do a couple of lines, let them dry and see if it looks right. Keep in mind that if you put it on too thin you can always go back and put some more on but you're not going to be able to take any off if it's too thick.

You can get some very nice results with this stuff as long as you don't buy in to poor old Billy Mays and his "wave the pen at your room and voila 20 seconds later it looks like it did the day they put down the tile" baloney.

But with some patience and some practice - and some sealer - you can get very nice results.

It was a waste of money & time. Nothing close to a marker. Ink wont flow well & the tip is not firm & easily damaged as soon as u start using. Very rough application too, not as smooth or easy as shown on the packet.
i am very disappointed in this product & to think i ordered for two!!!!
I wont recommend this to anyone, not even my enemy. I reglazed my bath & looked forward to doing a good job on my tiles but was so disappointed with this product.

We have old tiles in our bathroom and used this pen to color the worn out grout in between the tiles on our floor. It works wonders! The tiles are small and the grout lines are about the size of the pen tip...maybe that is why it worked so well for us. It is a bit time consuming and tedious but it does the job good enough to make an old floor look like new. We got about 1/3 of the way through our flooring with 1 pen and just ordered 2 more to finish the job. You do have to play with the pen pushing the tip down for the paint flow and be careful not to rough up the tip while you are painting (it is not rocket science).

I whitened the grout on my bathroom floor in about two hours. The room is done is one foot square tiles and is 10'x12'.

After you read the instruction sheet included in your package, keep in mind, "You need a plate to begin the flow of pigment to the nib." Remember to follow closely the part, "always remember to press the marker on the plate, not the grout, when you need more fluid." I found that I instinctively I pressed the marker on the grout to soak the nib with more fluid. Because I did that, I wore the nib down more quickly on the first marker. With the second marker, I pressed the marker on the plate to draw the fluid to the tip and I did it at frequent intervals. When you have more fluid in the tip, you can more easily transfer the fluid onto the grout because the nib is wet and you don't need to press hard when painting the grout.

The instructions are clear, but the procedure is counterintuitive, so there is a learning curve.

I spent about 50 bucks on this product. I started with two pens, which at 170 linear feet per pen should have been plenty for my little bathroom.
It is a lot of work especially for small (1960's era) tile.
I wound up buying 4 more pens to finish the room and in less than a week the grout looked like I hadn't touched it.
I would not recommend this product.
Bottom line:
Don't waste your money

I had the same experience as the first reviewer, these things are terrible. The ink does now flow well, and the nib wears out very quickly. There doesn't seem to be a way to get the paint to flow consistantly, sometimes it comes out, sometimes it doesn't. Complete waste of money and time.