Gearing up to do a bathroom reno in a 1850’s historic home. We plan on putting ditra heat under the tile floor and that requires a 2” minimum tile, so no 1”hex like I would have wanted. Based on my research, a 2” white marble hex appears to be the most appropriate choice (that I like) available to us, historically speaking, for the floor. I personally like the look of a honed finished best. I am thinking we would probably do the same stone in a square or rectangle for the shower walls too.

Problem is we have hard water with high manganese. Will white marble stain very easily with hard water/ rust? Currently we have porcelain faux travertine. We squeegee after every shower and I do a weekly scrub down with dish soap and a monthly deep clean a soft scrub cleaner and it’s been working fine to keep the hard water stains at bay, as best as I can tell with the tile we have. Will this routine damage the marble?

We are looking at making an offer on a house we really like and all baths have been remodeled professionally. However in the master bath I noticed they used real marble hex on the shower floor which I would have never done, and I’m afraid there’s no fixing this. I want to say this bath was remodeled earlier this year and if so, why does the floor tile look this bad already? They definitely had a professional do this remodeling project so you’d think they would’ve sealed the tile when it was first put in. Is the look of this marble considered normal even after being sealed? Again, we think this bathroom was remodeled less than a year ago.

In our current home we have porcelain look stone and love it. I can use bleach on the tile and grout and still looks good after 10 years. I’m not sure I’m going to love this other house if the shower floor already looks this bad. I understand marble etches and discolors but the grout here looks awful. And then I fear it’ll all have to be ripped out in 5-10 years before we can sell the home. And I could be wrong but I don’t think you can JUST replace the floor tile without ripping out some of the walls too. (BTW walls are mostly porcelain with the exception of the rear shower wall which appears to be real Marble but water doesn’t hit it constantly).

What can be used to fix the look of the grout? Is the marble doomed and there’s nothing we can do to make it look better?

Thoughts?