cleaning tiles

Travertine Stratford-upon-Avon After Cleaning

Travertine Tiled Floor Polished in Stratford upon Avon

Following on from a referral I agreed to travel down to Stratford upon Avon and deep clean this Travertine tiled floor which had not been professionally cleaned for over eight years and was now looking rather dull as you can see in the photograph below, additionally the holes in the travertine had not been filled and was allowing dirt to get trapped into the tile.

Travertine Stratford upon Avon Before Cleaning

Cleaning, Filling and Polishing Travertine Tiles

The first job was to wash the floor down with Pro-Clean to give it a general clean and remove any surface dirt and grit from the floor and then fill the holes with a colour matching grout; there were quite a few holes to fill so this task took some time to complete. Polished Travertine is a very hard stone so restore its finish it needs to be cut back and polished using of a set of diamond encrusted burnishing pads fitted to a rotary machine. You start with a coarse pad with a little water, then a medium pad, fine pad and finish with a very fine polishing pad, this takes some time but the effect it quite transforming, it does build up slurry on the floor so it all needs to be washed down again at the end.

Sealing and Buffing Travertine Tile

To keep the floor looking good for longer and protect it from stains it does need to be sealed so once it was dry it was sealed using two coats of Tile Doctor Colour Grow which is a colour enhancing sealer that brings out the colours in natural stone. Then once the sealer was dry it was buffed using a white buffing pad to make sure that I hadn’t left any residues from the seal.

Travertine Stratford upon Avon After Cleaning
The job took three days to complete in total and I think you will agree it’s now looking much healthier.

Travertine tiled floor maintained by Greater Manchester Tile Doctor

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Paxford Terracotta Floor after sealing

Matching mixed Terracotta Kitchen tiles in Paxford

This job was a Terracotta Tiled kitchen floor in Paxford near Chipping Camden, the Terracotta tiles were in a large kitchen/diner which had a mix of different types of Terracotta due to the replacement of some damaged tiles. The recently fitted tiles were slightly darker than the older tiles in the kitchen area and the customer wanted a closer match but at the same time didn’t want the floor looking new (with all the wax and oil removed) just the old tiles made darker. You can clearly see the problem in the first photograph below.

Paxford Terracotta Floor Before

Cleaning Terracotta Tiles

The floor had a heavy build of a wax and oil coatings which we tackled with a Tile Doctor Pro-Clean mixed with two parts NanoTech Ultra-Clean; this combines the strong cleaning power of the alkaline Pro-Clean with the nano sized abrasive particles in the Ultra-Clean to make a powerful cleaning agent. We left the solution to dwell and soak into the tiles for twenty minutes before working it in with a heavy floor buffing machine fitted with a black scrubbing pad, some areas had experienced little foot traffic and so had a thicker coating needed up to three cleans. All the edges were done by hand using wire wool pads and brushes. The soiled water was picked up by a wet and dry vacuum and then the floor was thoroughly rinsed with water using a high pressure spinning tool.

Paxford Terracotta Floor after cleaning

Terracotta Tile Sealing

We let the floor dry overnight and returned the next day to seal it for which we used a combination of Tile Doctor sealers. The first step was to darken some of the lighter tiles so they would match the others in the dining room we did this using a sealer called Colour Grow which brings out the colour in a Tile. Once we were happy with this floor was fully sealed using five coats of Tile Doctors new formula High Shine sealer to give a uniform look.

Paxford Terracotta Floor after sealing
 

Replacement Terracotta tiles sealed to match existing floor

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