Chesterfield

Limestone Kitchen Floor Before and After Cleaning Chesterfield

Dull Limestone Kitchen Floor Burnished and Polished in Chesterfield

You can’t beat the natural beauty of a stone floor, but you will find that over time the protective sealer wears down and dirt becomes ingrained in the pores of the stone. This process is so gradual you might not notice it until one day your looking at old photographs and realise the difference.

On this occasion a customer of mine had a Limestone tiled floor installed in the Kitchen of her house in Chesterfield fifteen years prior. It had never been deep cleaned and resealed since being installed and having recently completed a house extension with a new Limestone floor she realised just how dirty and tired the original floor now looked.

Limestone Kitchen Floor Before Cleaning Chesterfield Limestone Kitchen Floor Before Cleaning Chesterfield

I went over to take a look at the floor, demonstrate the cleaning process and discuss the different sealers we have available. She has happy for me to do the work and specified she didn’t want the floor to have a gloss appearance, so a matt sealer would be best.

Deep Cleaning a Dirty Limestone Tiled Floor

I returned a few weeks later to carry out the work and started by adding protection to the Kitchen units. The Limestone has quite ingrained and had quite a few scratches in the stone that would need to be grinded out so fitted a very coarse 100 grit diamond encrusted burnishing pad fitted to my heavy rotary floor buffer. You apply water to help lubricate the process and then once finished the floor is rinsed with more water and the soil extracted with a wet vacuum.

The next step was to get the grout as clean as possible by applying a strong dilution of Tile Doctor Pro-Clean and then scrubbing it by hand with a stiff narrow brush. This action released the dirt from the grout and was rinsed away again with water extracted using the wet vacuum.

This burnishing process was then repeated using a 200 grit and then 400 grit burnishing pads to refine the finish of the stone and close the pores, again water was used to rinse off the soil and the vet vacuum used to get the floor as dry as possible.

Whilst drying the floor with the wet vacuum I also inspected the floor and identified areas for further spot treatment. I also noticed a few places where the grout had crumbled and needed replacing and so this was raked out and re-grouted with a beige grout.

Sealing a Limestone Tiled Floor

The next morning, I returned to the property to finish off the floor with the matt sealer we had discussed earlier. The floor must be dry before applying the sealer, so I took a few readings with a damp meter first to ensure that was the case. This is important as it’s not unusual for sealers to go milky or ever peel off later if the floor hasn’t been thoroughly cleaned or wasn’t dry when the sealer was applied.

Limestone Kitchen Floor During Cleaning Chesterfield
All was well, so I started applying the sealer which in this case was Tile Doctor Ultra Seal, it’s a matt sealer that protects the stone from within by impregnating the pores with sealant without altering its appearance.

Limestone Kitchen Floor After Cleaning Chesterfield Limestone Kitchen Floor After Cleaning Chesterfield

My customer was very happy with the result and now has two matching Limestone tiled floors, she also left the following short comment on the Tile Doctor feedback system.

Great job, faultless ….. thanku
Anne M, Chesterfield

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Chinese Riven Slate Before and After Cleaning Sealing in Chesterfield

Poorly Maintained Chinese Riven Slate Tiles Restored in Chesterfield

This customer was very happy to find there was a Tile Doctor in Derbyshire, for a long time they had experienced problems with cleaning their fantastic Chinese Riven Slate tiled kitchen floor. The customer had attempted to carry out some amateur maintenance work on a couple of occasions but had never managed to achieve the results they had hoped for.

Thus the floor remained dull and afflicted with a large amount of ingrained dirt. I visited the property, located in Chesterfield, to see what could be done to restore the condition and appearance of the tiles.

Chinese Riven Slate Before Cleaning in Chesterfield Chinese Riven Slate Before Cleaning in Chesterfield
Chinese Riven Slate Before Cleaning in Chesterfield

Cleaning Dull and Dirty Chinese Riven Slate Tiles

In order to begin the cleaning process, it was first necessary to remove many layers of old and ineffectual sealer from the tiles. Dirt had become trapped in the sealer, and the was worsened by the fact that the customer had continued, year on year, to reseal the tiles without removing the existing sealer.

For stripping away the large amount of old sealer I applied Tile Doctor Remove & Go and scrubbed it into the floor using a rotary machine fitted with a poly brush. Remove & Go is a multi-purpose stripper formulated with a long dwell-time to remove
most sealers. And while it worked in most places, it couldn’t get rid of all the sealer. I opted in this scenario to mix the Remove & Go with Tile Doctor NanoTech HBU, a powerful cleaner and remover that uses nano-sized particles to tackle the toughest of stains, substance build-up and ingrained dirt.

The combination of these two products worked exceptionally well not only to remove the old sealer, but also several years’ worth of muck, without any additional problems. I follow the cleaning with a through rinse with clean water to remove any chemicals left on the floor. Finally, I left the tiles to dry out overnight.

Sealing Chinese Riven Slate Tiles

When I returned to the property the following morning I had to make sure that the floor was completely dry by running several damp tests. This is exceptionally Important as any excess moisture can cloud my fresh sealer you choose to apply, potentially damaging its performance. I found a couple of damp places and worked on them with my heat gun until they were no longer a problem.

When the floor was completely dry I applied 5 coats of Tile Doctor Seal & Go sealer which is a water-based blend of acrylic polymers that gives you stain resistant surface protection and a long lasting low-sheen finish.

Chinese Riven Slate After Cleaning and Sealing in Chesterfield Chinese Riven Slate After Cleaning and Sealing in Chesterfield
Chinese Riven Slate After Cleaning and Sealing in Chesterfield

The customer was extremely happy with the results, leaving the following comment on the Tile Doctor feedback system:

“Tony was a thorough professional, committed to doing as perfect a job as possible. He understood the material he was working with and did not skimp on taking the necessary time to complete the restoration. He gave us advice about future care and treatments and at all times behaved with the utmost courtesy and respect. His presence in the house was quiet and unobtrusive so that the disruption seemed minimal. He could not have been more obliging and he left the site clean and tidy even before the final completion of the job. Seeing him work restored our faith in a craftsman’s skill and technique.”

Professional Chinese Riven Slate Tiled Kitchen Floor Restoration in Chesterfield

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