Hello all, I'm in the process of trying to fix up my house to get it ready to rent. I'm looking at my kitchen/entryway flooring and and would appreciate some opinions/suggestions on how to approach fixing up my grout in the kitchen/entryway. Google's a fantastic resource, but (in my experience) grout is a major pain and I'd appreciate any guidance before I go down a bad path.
Anyway, I'd say there are 4 different types of problems I'm looking at:
1. general discoloration. It's not bad, I'd even just leave it like it is, but if there's a suggested product I'd give it a try.
2. Cracks in "hard grout" where the wall meets the grout. It might not be appropriate to describe it as a crack, more like just a separation of the wall from the group. The separation is not large, maybe just a millimeter in width, but can be several inches to even a foot or longer in length. Can I use a painters caulking or some other type of caulking to fill these edges? Or try to fill it with some actual grout? Or scrape these sections out and re-grout entirely?
3. Deteriorating "soft grout" where the wall meets the grout. Most of the grout against the wall appears to be "hard grout", but there's some areas where I assume some sort of caulking is used instead, where I can feel the texture of it is softer. These areas have generally deteriorated faster. I assume I can just scrape out the caulking and apply a new caulking of similar tone.
4. Cracks in the "hard grout" in the middle of the flooring (not against the wall). Not many of them, and they don't look deep, very hairline. I only saw a couple, generally where the grout meets the tile.
Thanks again for any suggestions. Doesn't need to look perfect, just presentable, and hopefully not with a "fix" that will fall apart in 2 months :-)