Full Bathroom Reno Day 18: How to Grout with a Grout Bag and Paint the Shower Ceiling

You may have noticed a lack of bathroom renovation posts here on the blog, and that's because we haven't worked on it for nearly a couple of weeks, for extenuating circumstances. We got back to work on it today, though.

We started to put up the pencils, which if you're not familiar, they look like this. But, due to the nature of our uneven natural stone, they weren't lining up. The idea of a pencil is to act as a trim, making a straight even line around the uneven natural stone. But in our case, it wouldn't have been even so we decided not to go through with it. Instead, we are going to finish the edges with caulk, like a typical shower surround.

Next, we decided to fill in a gap near the ceiling on one of the tiled walls.

On the other two walls we tiled up to the ceiling, but on this first wall we stopped a little short. It was the first wall we did, and we assumed we needed to leave room for caulk, but it was a bit too much room. So, Jake cut tiny slivers of the tile and we filled in the gaps with those.

We let the thinset dry, then we grouted the two corner lines. We decided to use a grout bag, to pipe it in the cracks easier. We chose unsanded grout, because our lines were less than 1/8".

We mixed the grout per instructions, but I will note that if you're using a grout bag, it's a lot easier if the grout is more on the runny side. We did one seam with grout that was a thicker consistency, and one with grout that was a thinner consistency, and it was a ton easier with the thinner grout. With the grout bag, you simply pipe it into the cracks just like you were icing a cake.

After we grouted the seams, we smoothed it with these caulk tools to great a nice line.

In these photos the grout is reading lighter than it reads in person. In person, it blends beautifully.

After we grouted, I painted two coats on the ceiling of a water and mold resistant paint. In hindsight, it would have been a lot smarter to paint it before we tiled, but live and learn.

We were ready to seal the tile, but I read on the instructions that you must wait 72 hours after any grout application to seal it, so we are waiting. After that, we can caulk around all of the edges, secure the hardware, and be done! Yay! I'm very happy to be at this point.