October 2019 – Tiling Tips – Tips and Information About Tiling

Honing a Tumbled Marble Floor in Oxford

31st October 2019 Reese Mackie 0 Comments Cleaning Tumbled Marble, Dining Room, grout cleaning, Honing Marble, Kitchen Tiles, oxford, oxfordshire, Stone Cleaning

The owners of this house in the historic city of Oxford contacted Tile Doctor about their Tumbled Marble tiled floor which was not looking its best and was proving difficult to clean effectively. The floor is part of a kitchen/dining room where the grout had darkened substantially with dirt. Oxford is only 12 miles from by base in Chalgrove so I spoke to the client on the phone and arranged an appointment to visit the property and survey the floor. I could see that sealer had also worn off which is a common problem with natural stone floor and dirt was now trapped in the pores of the stone. They had tried multiple types of household floor cleaners and nothing was getting the floor to look clean, and as it was so light in colour it was really looking quite dirty. We find the best way to renovate hard stone flooring such as Marble is to use a set of diamond burnishing pads which hone the stone and restore its appearance. I recommended this method to the homeowner and worked out a quote. The quote was agreed, and we set a date to do the work which given the size of the floor I calculated would take two days, one to burnish and one to seal. Cleaning/Repairing a Tumbled Marble Tiled Kitchen/ Dining room Floor The burnishing process starts with the application of a coarse

Renovating Rust Stained Marble Shower tiles near Shrewsbury

30th October 2019 Reese Mackie 0 Comments Church Preen, Iron deposits, Marble Mosaics, Marble Sealing, marble tiles, Rust Removal, rust staining, Shower Wall, Shrewsbury, Tile Cleaning, Well Water

We were contacted by a homeowner near Shrewsbury about the Marble wall tiles in their shower which were looking particularly grubby. They had tried to clean the area with a multitude of household products but were unable to improve their appearance and had decided to call in some professional help. I went over to do a site visit, run some tests and recommend a solution, I like to do this where possible as it ensures I can provide an accurate quote and it also gives me an opportunity to demonstrate a workable solution. The tiles were the small two inch square Marble Mosaics which from my point of view means there’s a log of grout to clean. More importantly whilst there I discovered their water is pumped up from a well and the water is rich in Iron deposits. You can see on the picture where the water has dried on the walls and then the Iron deposits have turned rusty resulting in a large rust stain. The property was in the old village of Church Preen which a small Hamlet in Shropshire which only has around 30 properties, it is approximately 12 miles from the county town of Shrewsbury. Cleaning Rust Stained Marble Shower Tiles Normally I would remove the iron and rust deposits with an acid-based product such as Acid Gel or Grout Clean-up but Marble is acid sensitive and