Filling decorative slab cutlines

[jrdepew]

I just finished building a screened porch on the back of our place. The floor is a decorative slab, stamped/stained/cut to look like 24"x24" pieces of stone. When cutting the floor, the contractor used handheld concrete saws, and even an angle grinder to finish some of the cuts. The cuts are deep in some places, 1-1.5" or so. These are very good at collecting dirt...

I am torn between just vacuuming them out when I clean inside, or filling them with something to make it look more like large format tiles. Grout would be my choice, I think, but does anyone have any ideas here? Some pics...and you can see the floor in some of them.

Before and during construction:








Down to the punchlist and landscaping!




Thanks,
Joe

 

[jaxs]

Had you known this beforehand,shallower cuts would have been much easier to grout. As it stands,I'm not sure you can fill them with grout,even with a grout bag. You may have to use some sort of liquid(2 part) that hardens. I wonder if cuts could be partly filled with sand then topped with grout. I agree they should be filled.

 

[RNeumann]

I’d be more inclined to use grout caulking (sanded or unsanded) would be a better option. I’d be worried the regular grout would scratch or otherwise damage the concrete flooring as it’s not as hard as tile.

 

[Tractor Seabee]

Fill the joints with self leveling urethane sealant such as SIKAFLEX. They have it at Loews and HD. At a contractor supplier they have it in many colors that you can close match or contrast. Urethane dos not ravel out like silicon. Cuts more the 1/2" deep need backer rod to fill up to that 1/2" first.

Ron

 

[EddieWalker]

I would use grout. Home Depot sells Polyblend and that's what most of the pros use. It's very good grout. Just be sure to buy the stuff that you mix yourself, not the premix. Never use premix!!!! Sanded grout is a lot better then unsanded, but you need a 1/8 or bigger gap for sanded. Even better then Polyblend is Prism. It's really good stuff, but a little bit more money. It's what I'm going to use on my swimming pool. It doesn't care how big the gap is, so you can use it on any sized gap. You can probably find it online. I haven't looked. I'm at the Tile Shop at least once a week, sometimes several times a week, so I get it there.

One of the biggest misunderstandings about grout is the sealer. The sealer is not to stop the grout from staining. There are some that include something that helps stop staining, but if you have a light colored grout, it will still stain if you spill something on it. Sealers are actually a chemical component that hardens the grout. If left un sealed, grout will remain porous and soft. Once sealed, it hardens like concrete. A lot of the time when I'm removing tile, the grout is stronger and harder then the tile.

Grout locks the tile together and is an important part of the overall strength of a tile floor.

In your case, it would fill the gaps, but offer no additional strength to the floor. Not that it's needed. In my opinion, it would be an excellent material to fill your gaps.

After forcing the grout into the cracks and wiping away the excess with a sponge, wait a full day to go back and clean up the haze. I use paper towels to do this. Be sure to use something dry, otherwise, you just spread it around. Then use the sealer once you have everything nice and clean.

I would not use any sort of caulking. The colored stuff used for tile is probably the worse to work with. It's messy and very hard to keep clean. The stuff used for outdoor concrete, like driveways, is even worse. It will be impossible to get a nice clean finish using that stuff. Do not confuse this type of material with the type of caulking used for painting trim.