Flooring Tile - spacers in grout problem

My sister is looking at purchasing a house and I went with her to check it out. In the master bath, there are several spots where the spacers are beginning to poke up through the grout and crack it.

I noticed in one of John Bridge's replies that it's O.K. to leave the spacers in and grout over them, so I guess that whoever did this job didn't do a good job of setting them in.

My question is this: to remedy the situation, I'm guessing that I'll have to chip out the grout and redo it. How hard is this and what should I look out for so that I don't cause more problems than already exist?

Al

The problem with the spacers is that if you don't push them right to the back of the joint as far as they can go, you end up with this problem. I never put them in as a cross for this reason...I use them points first..so that they are sticking out from the tile...you get the same spacing, but you can pull them out quite easily the next day..and use them again.(how cheap can I get eh)
Since you don't have many to remove, you can sometimes just scratch away around the spacer with a utility knife(be careful) and then pry them out with a sharp pointed tool or even a big safety pin...and then just regrout the hole. Just be careful you don't chip the tile as you work.

I knew that response would come back to haunt me. The lady who asked the question had put up a bunch of 2-1/4 in. tiles with small cross spacers and didn't want to go through the removal process. I told her just to make sure they were all pushed back all the way.

According to the book, the spacers are supposed to be removed, and they make special tools for doing it. But when I use them I do it like Adanac and pull them the next day.

As far as the repair is concerned, Adanac has covered it. I wonder where he finds large safety pins these days. I can't even find small ones.

John

http://www.johnbridge.com

spacers should always be removed

John...www.safetypins.com......I'm just kidding of course...but this is an actual site!

Any thin pointed object will work, but I guess the point is that it's best to remove the spacers.

Thanks for the info folks. I had never actually thought about using spacers flat like that (I assumed everybody used them "points first," but then again...).

I'll let her know that it's not too much trouble to fix (fortunately the grout is white, not some impossible-to-match variant of beige.)

Yeah, before we shed any more darkness on this topic, I suppose I should state the actual reasons for removing the spacers. Don't laugh. They take up space. The grout can discolor over the spacer because the joint is not as deep in that area as it is everywhere else.

Additionally, The grout could possibly collapse in the area over the spacer, since the spacer itself is soft plastic. Anyway, it's best to take them out.

But on a wall, where the spacers have been pushed well back out of the way, well . . . .

John