For any of you living in a midcentury home, you likely have some killer, original tile in your space. We have two bathrooms that are currently untouched, built in 1960. As you would expect, they are filled with glorious mosaic tile on the floor — full of midcentury charm. As you also likely know if you own a home from the 1960s, tile and materials from back then seem to last WAY longer than what is done nowadays. We love the tile and just want to restore and preserve what we have.
Our newest project began on our ‘brown bathroom’, as we call it. It’s basically our guest bathroom, as we don’t have a master bath, like many homes from this era. Here’s what we’re working with:
It’s really a great core and some beautiful tile. We’re embarking on a low budget refresh / small renovation to just spruce it up.
Step one is working to get the tile as cleaned up as we can:
You can see the grout is pretty dirty. I asked my amazing Insta followers for advice and many suggested a steamer. I was confident it would work, but my husband thought otherwise.
Well…results are amazing! We are not yet done…this is a lot of elbow grease and time. But I got this incredible product from Amazon and it’s working wonders.
I am just pushing the small nozzle around grout line by grout line, scrubbing, wiping away the gunk (which is amazing to see coming up, by the way), and doing the process over and over in each spot. Taking a small section at a time. I’ve got some trouble spots in the middle of the room that is proving tougher to clean up, but I’m going to keep plugging away.
Plan is to get it as clean as we can, then seal it up.
Follow along to watch progress @the_mod_bar.
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