About a month or two ago a void in the grout appeared in the back hall while Georgia was sucking dirt off the floors (no sweeping or dust mopping for her). Since it was the only one we noticed (this time), Randy offered to fix it for the family.
Georgia decided to clean up the void so that Randy could work on it. She got out a toothbrush that had been downgraded from bathroom use and used it as a miniature broom. She was surprised to see that more and more grout continued to come out of the hole. She kept going until no more grout came up. Now we had a large hole on our hands.
Georgia decided to keep looking around for more problems, and found several large areas in the back hall. This was not right! She took some photos and emailed them with her complaint to the building supervisor for our builder. He responded by copying her on an email to the flooring subcontractor that they should contact us.
The next Monday, when Georgia cleaned the house, she was again scheduled to vacuum the floors. She decided to look carefully all around the tile areas.
At first Georgia tried opening up all of the holes she knew were there. But that got to be work. Then she took the easy approach of just marking the spot. She ended up putting down so many blue marks that it looked like a blue monster had barfed all over the floor.
The flooring company called to schedule a visit from the installation supervisor. When he arrived he talked with Georgia for a few minutes. He then pulled out his baby screwdriver and levered up some grout without any trouble. He opined that the installer had added too much water to the grout during mixing, and that he would have all of the grout in the main area (where the problem was) replaced.
At that visit Georgia was told that it could take up to two weeks before the installation team could come out. However, she received a phone call the next day saying that something had happened with the schedule, and that they could have someone out on Wednesday.
The day that that the installer came out Georgia showed him the problems with the grout. He said that he's been doing grout for 23 years, and that had never happened to him before. The installer contradicted his supervisor and opined that the problem happened because of old/bad grout.
The guy and his assistant got out their hand tools and started removing grout. Randy, who hadn't left for work yet, asked them why they didn't have a power tool to do the work. The installer said that the power tools put out too much dust. The installer used a shop vacuum to suck up the old grout, which Georgia appreciated. However, they also opened the back door trying to vent the remaining dust outside of the house. Georgia explained that she would deal with whatever dust remained in the house because she didn't want additional pollen to enter.
Finally, the grout was removed from the tile, and regrouting could commence. At the start of the day the installer thougth they could finish in 6 hours or so. However, it took about eight hours to completely finish the job.
So now we have new grout in the main part of the house.
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