http://www.AsktheBuilder.com host Tim Carter shares his grouting tips as he tackles the second step of grouting ceramic floor tiles. He shows how to apply sanded grout and strike the joints to remove excess grout.

Video Transcription

I’m getting ready to grout this floor tile and what I want to talk about is just to tell you the few steps that I take to do it. There’s all different kind of ways to grout floor tile but I’m going to tell you what’s worked for me for the past 35 years and I’ve never had a failure. What I just did right there is I took damp sponge and I just lightly went over the tile just to kind of get it wet and it's not dripping wet. It's just damp and what that does is that it lubricates the tile so that when I put the sanded floor grout onto it, that it won’t scratch the tile because there is little particles of silica sand that are very sharp and by just lubricating it, it just makes it go a little easier. I’ve already mixed my grout and it's about the consistency of bricklayer’s mortar. I just like to put it on just like this. You don’t have to put too much. I used a rubber float. These are really cool tools. This is just like a float that a concrete finish might use but the difference is it's made out of a very stiff rubber. And one of the mistakes that a rookie might make is just taking it right now and starting to spread the grout. I’ve discovered over the years, if you don’t get it damp first by dipping it in a bucket of water just like this. I just take it and just dip it in, kind of get the water off, just kind of get that wet and really helps spread the grout. Now, what we’re going to do is when I got to spread this grout, you’re going to notice that I’m not applying the grout like this because if you do that, the edge of the float drops down into that crack. So, as you strike the grout, you always want to try to go at an angle just like that. You don’t want to go this way. You can go this way but you’ve got to be careful as you’d go this way and you’d get to this line, you’ll drop down inside. That’s why it's better just to always go at an angle. But, you want to try to push the grout down into the joint and don’t worry about getting the grout all over the tile. I know that might make you nervous but notice I’m just pushing it in. It's really that simple. You really want to drive that grout in there and here’s what I was talking about where you want to get this excess off and you strike it, watch what happens. You strike it at an angle and look at that. You want to get as much to that excess off as possible. It's really important. You can push down with two hands, making sure that the joint is filled and smoothed all the way. Notice, there’s no depressions in that joint and especially right here, really important and you just do that over an area. Usually about three feet by three feet, you have to remember that you have to come back and you have to strike the grout joints to the sponge but you can’t do that right away. You can’t grout so much floor tile that you can’t use off and reach. If I try to grout all these floor tiles at once, I have a big nightmare on my hands because I would have to walk across that the places I haven’t sponged first. So just try to do areas three feet by three feet, maybe three feet by four feet you know to where you can reach comfortably because you can see I can reach out here pretty easily and I’ll be in really, really good shape. That’s all you have to do to actually apply the grout. I’m going to show you another video exactly how to clean it and strike it to make sure that the joints look perfect. I’m Tim Carter for askthebuilder.com.