Eye Sore

Picture, if you will (and you have to because I still have yet to post pictures of our current abode), over 600 square feet of this exact tile.  Up and down the hall and entry, in the bathrooms and covering the kitchen/dining.  Upon first glance...not bad (considering you are a tile person, which personally- I would never make tile my first choice of flooring (in areas other than the bathrooms and possibly the kitchen) and don't even get me started on picking white tile.  That you can't even begin to get my understanding in).  The picture actually looks more cream than the tile actually is.  The grout is just about right though.

Now, I will play a little trick on your eyes (and your stomach once you get what happened.)  Look quickly at this next picture and tell me what you think...

Go on.  Try it again.  Do the double, and probably triple look.  Yep.  The ORIGINAL color of the over 600 square feet of tile I am living on and my little ones are playing (and who knows what else) on was white.  First few days of moving in, I assumed it was intended to be dark brown.  Then someone came and repaired a tile or two- with white grout.  Why on earth would they do that?  I wondered.  Then I noticed them.  The small, slightly lighter colored sections of tile in the remote places of the floor.  Endless amounts of stomach churnning later I realized my task at hand.  1) Pay over $800 to have the tile professionally cleaned.  (Trust me, I would have.)  or 2) Dig down and get dirty and do the job myself.

1 whole box of Oxiclean (pure magic if you ask me.)

4 grout cleaning brushes (worn completely to the plastic)

2 packages of industrial wash rags (72 count)

Several loads of laundry washing those rags

2 mops

Gallons of water

and a HUGE mess (spread into three or four stages/sections) later...

I ended up with the second picture.  Not perfect, but clean no doubt.  Chalk this one up to experience.  I will NEVER, by choice, have so much stinking light colored tile in my place of living again (and probably not so much tile, period).  If I do- you are free to slap me.