I was asked by a customer in Leatherhead, Surrey to clean the Limestone tiled floors that had been installed throughout the ground floor of his house. I popped round to take a look at the job and could see that the Limestone tile and grout was quite dirty; it was clear that the sealer had broken down and dirt was now becoming ingrained into the stone and grout.
The floor would need to be burnished and re-sealed to get it back to its original condition and so I provided a quote to do the work. The quote was accepted although he did ask if I could provide a couple of references from former clients; there are over 70 testimonials from past customers on my website so this was not a problem and I was happy to do so. Once he had received the references he called to book me in.
Cleaning Limestone Floor Tiles
My first job was to protect the walls and units before scrubbing the first area with a hot solution of Tile Doctor Pro-Clean using a rotary machine fitted with a brush head attachment. This process lifted the dirt out from the grout, the surface and any holes.
The floor was then rinsed thoroughly with clean water to remove any cleaning products and I then proceeded to burnish the Limestone tiles using a set of four burnishing pads system fitted to a rotary machine. You start with a coarse pad lubricated with a little water and this removes any remaining sealers and ingrained dirt from the stone. Any slurry is then rinsed away and you move onto the remaining medium, fine and superfine polishing pads which bring back the polished surface, again each pad needs to be lubricated with a little water which needs to be rinsed away after each pad. It was a large area so as you can imagine this took some time to apply this process to the entire floor so I focused on the Kitchen then first day and came back the second day to work on the hallway and utility room.
Sealing Limestone Floor Tiles
On the third day I came back to seal the floors using two coats of Tile Doctor Colour Grow which is a colour enhancing penetrating sealer that brings out the different shades of colour in Limestone and is designed to provide maximum stain protection on natural stone floors. The last step was to buff the floor to a nice shine with a rotary machine fitted with a white pad.
The grout is now back to its original grey as opposed to black and the Limestone look new again, needless to say the customer was really pleased with the finish and has since recommended my services to other friends.
Source: Professional Tile, Stone and Grout maintenance service in Surrey
Great result, the Limestone looks recently laid.