limestone floor

Honed Limestone After Cleaning and Sealing in Marlborough

Honed Limestone Tiled Floor Cleaned and Sealed in Marlborough

The photographs below of a Honed Limestone tiles fitted in the living room of a house in Marlborough. The tiles were proving difficult to keep clean especially around the high traffic areas such as the doorway, I suspect the sealer had worn down and dirt was now becoming ingrained in the pores of the stone.

Honed Limestone Before Cleaning in Marlborough

Cleaning Limestone Floor Tiles

The first job was to remove any surface dirt and get the grout clean so a strong dilution of Tile Doctor Pro-Clean was mopped onto the floor and left to dwell for around ten minutes before being scrubbed into the tile and grout lines with a stiff brush. We then removed the dirty cleaning solution with a wet vacuum and rinsed the floor with clean water.

The next step was to burnish the Limestone tiles using a set of diamond burnishing pads starting with the coarse or number 1 pad as it’s known. This is run over the stone in conjunction with a little water and is designed to remove old sealers and other surface coatings and clean at the same time. The resultant milky slurry is the removed using a wet vacuum and the floor rinsed before repeating the whole process with the medium (number 2) pad and fine grade (number 3) pad. The Limestone tiles were then given a final rinse and left to dry overnight. I should point out the Limestone was honed as opposed to polished so there was no need to apply the final pad which is used to bring up the polish on stone.

Sealing Limestone Floor Tiles

I returned the next day to seal the floor checking first that it was dry by taking multiple readings with a damp meter. The result were fine so I was able to move quickly onto sealing the floor for which I used two coats of Tile Doctor Colour Grow which is a versatile impregnating sealer that occupies the pores in the stone preventing contaminates from lodging there and enhancing the colours in natural stone.

Honed Limestone After Cleaning and Sealing in Marlborough
 

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Limestone Floor Restored in Nunton Before and After

Limestone and Travertine Floor Restored in Nunton

The owner of this house in Nunton near Salisbury got in touch to take a look at the grout lines on their Travertine and Limestone tiled floors which were becoming increasingly dirty and the tiles has started to take on dirt also. We offer a free no obligation survey so I went along to take a look and whilst there did a test clean which worked out really well so they booked us in straight away.

Limestone Floor Restored in Nunton Before Limestone Floor Restored in Nunton Before

Cleaning Travertine and Limestone Tiles

We started by applying a mild dilution of Tile Doctor Pro-Clean which was spread over the floor with particular attention paid to getting the solution into the grout lines. The solution was left to dwell for 10 minutes in order for it to soak in and eat through any dirt and existing sealer; we then used a stiff grout brush to scrub each and every grout line. Next we removed any trace of product by using a wet vacuum and rinsing thoroughly with clean water.

Our next step was to use our diamond encrusted burnishing pads which attach to a rotary machine and burnish the floor with four different grits from coarse to super fine. First using course pad number 1 we put some clean water on the floor and using our rotary machine slowly burnished the area making sure that we passed over each tile 4 times, this coarse pad cuts into the surface grime of the floor and also removes sealers. The resultant slurry is rinsed away with clean water which in turn is removed using a wet vacuum. This process is then repeated with the remaining pads, rinsing between each pad until a nice polish is built up on the tile. The floor is then given a final rinse and once we were satisfied that all the slurry had been removed we left the floor to dry overnight.

Cleaning Travertine and Limestone Tiles

Upon our return we first completed a damp test using a damp meter to make sure the floor had dried sufficiently for sealing. The floor was fine so we started by polishing the surface using a green polishing pad attached to a rotary machine. We then sealed the floor using single coat of Tile Doctor Colour Grow which is an impregnating sealer that will occupy the pores in the stone to prevent other contaminates getting in there, Colour Grow also brings out the colours in the stone especially the browns in Travertine. Once the sealer had dried a white buffing pad was attached to the rotary machine and the floor buffed to a nice shine.

Limestone-Floor-Restored-in-Nunton-After Limestone Floor Restored in Nunton After

 

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