I laid a satillo tile floor with one inch grout joints. I had sealed the tiles before I grouted with natural gray grout, however, I was unable to remove all the grout from the tiles. I used muratic acid to clean the remaining grout off the tiles. In the process, the muratic acid turned the gray grout partially white. I need to remove this prior to re-sealing the floor. Any suggestions? Thanks

Yes what happened here is you "burned" the grout with the acid. Remove burned grout and re grout.
Can you explain to me why you sealed before you grouted and what was that sealer out on.

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The GroutSmith

Get some wet/dry sand paper and see if you can just sand away the very top layer of the grout. If that does not work, and if the grout returns to it's proper color and is uniform if wet, consider trying an enhancing sealer over the grout. The next option short of regrouting is going over the existing grout with a grout colorant which will both sel and recolor the existing grout.

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Can you explain to me why you sealed before you grouted

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Saltillo is extremely absorptive.

I totally Disagree with sanding ANY grout/ cement base material. The grout is 'Burnt" and weakened completely in that spot. Sanding grout is as goofy as sanding your concrete walk. Sanding will also give the grout a different look in the tooling effect and not match texture to the grout beside it. Also NEVER Sand Tile! Same thing the Minuit texture being smooth will change the texture.


Grout is just like the cementious base mortar/portland material to lay brick and gets on brick. what we do to clean off mortar is we never SAND brick. A couple of ways to wash down any Mortar base material goes like this. Mix 1 part acid 2 past water. for a total wash down brick and mortar. For more stubborn its 1/2 water and 1/2 water. The best way to clean off thick areas is to take a sponge and some acid gloves and use the acid directly on the tough spots. get it wet just enough to fizzle the hard spots. Use a wooden tool to scrap and fizzle. Not metal the acid will eat the metal and discolor the tile and acid. If the acid touches the actual grout line it will discolor "Burnt" BE real in control with the tip edge of the sponge. Use a good hard sponge.
Again The grout that tis burned is already weakened on the top and that's need scraped of our re grouted. Its now to contaminated with the acid and it will not be neutralized enough for a sealer to work properly.
Heads up on softer tile compared to harder tile Most of that is the fire time in the kiln and the type of and amount of glazing. You ever wonder why cheaper tile is less FIRE time is the cost difference basically. So the softer the tile tile the less in density it is and that also make MUCH softer and more absorbent.
The skinny on Mertic Acid. It is kept out of the same building and area of the new masonry trowel at the real Masonry supply house. It rust the trowels even in sealed bottles. This is how caustic it is. There's another product to kleen tile/brick. Shuree Kleen which is less caustic and it doesn't attack brick that have a lot of iron in it. It's a high based detergent and works well also if not better and neutralizes better.

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Been taken mortar and grout off brick for 30 years its still the same base material. You won't every see a mason using SANDPAPER to get/grout/mortar off brick..