[2BNTV]

All of the previous suggestions are great but I would do the minimum needed to the house you purchase, until you have decided this is the house your staying in and never plan to move, before you take on several projects that may cost thousands of dollars.

The average villager moves three times.

A fairly new home won't require much repair so most of the changes might be decorative. It is very easy to spend several thousand dollars and then, oops, I decided we should move!!!

Like the old saying, "measure twice and cut once".

[Linny]

Would it be wise to seal the grout before we move in? Any one having trouble with grout getting nasty? Can't wait to be able to move.

[Waverunner]

Sealing grout. We didn't include this in our "things to do immediately" recommendations, while the house is still empty, because we did it. It was the worst thing we did before moving in. We hired a local company, whose owner lives in TV. There are even glowing reviews for them on TOTV. To make a long story short, the owner himself ended up doing the work. He used his "proprietary" sealant formula, which turned out to be purchased, right out of the can, concrete sealer. Anywhere the sealant touched that was not grout, left smear marks permanently on the tile. He also sealed the bathroom, including the shower floors. He completely covered the shower floor tiles, (his excuse was that they were small). The product he used was not supposed to be used in wet areas. The product manufacturers doesn't make a remover. We learned most of this after the fact.

There is usually not enough lighting in a new house to see the extent of damage (smear marks, splashes, drips) before it is finished and paid for. When we complained, and showed him the areas we were concerned with, he offered to come back and remove the overspills. He showed up with a helper, a mop, bucket and some Goof Off. Based on research we had done, we knew this was not a solution and we asked them to leave. We spent a whole day with acetone in an enclosed space, trying to mitigate the shower floor sealant.

Our only advice here to anyone wanting to hire someone to seal their grout would be to 1.) know exactly what product or products are going to be used on your grout and that this/these are meant for grout; 2.) know if the sealant is removable (within a certain time during application or after); get references for the same type of job, talk to them, and ask if you can see example of finished work (many happy homeowners in TV are happy to show off their projects); and during the whole time of application, watch them do the work.

The floor was supposed to be super cleaned before application, so the expectation was to have ultra clean, shiny floors when finished. Our floors had a dirty look to them before (post new construction) and worse after. Plus, we get a daily reminder of this bad choice every time we get in the shower and see the shiny smear marks.