Cleaning Grout
If you are getting your home ready for the real estate market, here is a cheap way to make your bathroom look so much better. This is one of the home staging tips I give during consultations. After all, we all live in our houses and have only so much energy to clean after we have worked all day!
Just cleaning the bathroom already makes it feel newer. When the grout is cleaned, the look goes up a big level!
Walking into a bathroom for the first time and seeing discoloured grout or mold on the tiles can be off-putting for potential buyers. They are no longer envisioning a spa. We want buyers to love the feel, look, and smell of our bathrooms.
Whether it is mold in the shower, discolouration around the toilet, or just discoloured grout from too many years of wear and little cleaning, you must try fixing it before selling your home. Here are some ideas which you can try:
1. A simple homemade solution — wash your floors with soap and water with a bit of bleach. If you prefer a more natural solution, you can create your own all-purpose cleaner with one cup distilled white vinegar, one cup water, and one tablespoon baking soda. Place it in an empty spray bottle and see if you can get the grout clean with it.
2. Commercial grout cleaners — these can be effective but could be toxic if inhaled, so make sure there is a lot of ventilation when you use them. Apply, leave the room, come back 20 minutes later with a brush, and brush the grout. Make sure you are wearing gloves because it can be corrosive, and keep windows open.
3. Thicker gel-based cleaners — a customer once showed me a thicker, gel-like bathroom cleaner with bleach. You put it on the tiles and let it soak, then brush, and you will see the difference. Make sure pets can’t get near it while it’s soaking.
4. The most laborious solution is grinding out the old grout and putting in new grout.
5. Grout paint/refresh products — once I staged a home where the kitchen was brand new but sitting on old tiles with old discoloured grout. The owners ended up buying a grout refresh product and the floor looked new. I don’t know how long this treatment will last, but it helped sell the home.
Hope these tips helped. Feel free to share your own grout cleaning solutions with us!