Well, the finishing on the aspen wood boards turned out awesome!
The tile grout? Not so much. Yeah - I failed to find that Goldilocks level of just the right amount of water. Using the caulking was actually kind of hard, especially compared to simple grout work.
So let's go back to the beginning and show what happened.
This was the first bead of caulking laid down.
Then after floating it into the cracks, just with a flexible 3" taping knife (I didn't try a grout float, because I figured it wouldn't flow smoothly, being a different substance and all)...
...and washing it down multiple times, just like you do for regular grout, I ended with this.
Okay - worked pretty good. Wow! Used more than I thought. That section ALMOST used an entire tube! Let's do some more then.
Not so bad! Nice flexible latex grout, won't fall out going down the road. Should work well!
And two tubes got me about here.
I only HAD two tubes. So I ran over to the home center to get more. They only had the siliconized stuff - in the wrong color. Called it a day. Planned for the other side of town tomorrow.
Next morning I awoke and checked. OH NO! Shrinkage! I didn't get pics, but the grout lines shrank and receded in uneven ways, little voids, some fuller, some less so. I thought, 'maybe a second application will do the job, and a better "floating" on the rest of the area'. But it appeared it was going to take more caulking than I had figured.
Over at the other home centers, they had changed stock. Same stuff, but only in white (I was using gloss biscuit). So I went over to the tiling section to see what kinds of grout they had.
I found two choices of potential, and picked this one, which stated it had acrylic latex. A touch of flexibility, as opposed to a cement based grout only. I hope it's enough. I used it. And it uses glass beads instead of sand, for the smaller grout lines, as opposed to use of a non-sanded.
And it did a really fine job! We'll just have to wait and see if it holds up.
On another note, I got the neutral stain and three coats of poly on the wood pieces, and a couple coats of primer on the underside of the counter.
So that pretty much completes the finishing section for these portions.
Tomorrow I'll get back into Chapter 10. Galley & Greatroom and show some stuff in there, including the installation of some of these pieces.
