Fireplace: Grout Doubt

You may recall I had a very difficult time choosing a grout color for this project. So, rather than take a risk and potentially slather the wrong grout color all over my tiles, I decided to do a test run. 

Oh, by the way, my parrot, Lolly, is serving as the Chief Ridiculous Officer over this project. 

I pulled out a flat piece of board I had lying around in my garage...

...and marked it to make a perfect square. My thought process was if this test piece turned out good-looking, I could possible use it as a coaster later.

I trimmed off the excess board and got to work.

I trimmed a section of tile to fit.

I applied a thin layer of thinset.

I plopped my tile on top, along with some extra penny halves I had cut earlier in the project.

And then, I busted out my grout. I have used this exact color before, in my townhouse. I decided to go with a darker grout. I felt it accentuated the penny tile better than light grout, and gave it a more "old Hollywood meets Spanish revival" feel. I guess we'll find out soon if I was right! Eeek!! I'm getting nervous. And this is only the test piece!

I applied my grout and then walked away.

After my test piece had a chance to dry, I propped it up by my fireplace so that I could start imagining the entire thing down in brown grout. At this point, I'm still having some doubts when I look at it up close. 

But from further away, it looks exactly like what I wanted. I may test out a slightly lighter tan color just for another option. I know I definitely do NOT want to use white grout -- after seeing the white thinset creep through in certain areas, I know I don't like that look. 

So, I guess I'm sort of back to the drawing board. We'll see. My penny tiles are mounted slightly closer together than they are on my test piece, so the grout will be even less visible on the fireplace. I guess I just need to get up my nerve and GO FOR IT. Stay tuned to find out how it all turns out! Cheers!