This Travertine tiled floor was installed in the kitchen of a house in Oadby, Leicestershire. The sealer on the floor was starting to fail letting dirt become ingrained into the Travertine; it was now due a deep clean, burnish and re-seal which would improve the look of the stone and keep it that way for years to come.
Cleaning and Stripping a Travertine Tiled Floor
The first job was to give the floor a thorough clean with a particular focus on the grout, this was done using Tile Doctor Remove and Go which was left to soak into the floor before being worked into the stone using a scrubbing pad attached to a rotary machine. The soiled cleaning solution was then extracted using a wet vacuum and we set our rotary machine up to burnish the floor
Burnishing the floor involves stripping back the stone using a coarse diamond encrusted burnishing pad and then building up the finish with a medium, fine and super fine pad until you have restored the polish and appearance. A little water is used to lubricate the process and in-between each pad the resultant slurry is rinsed away. Once this was done we left for the day and we didn’t come back for three days so the floor could dry out thoroughly.
Sealing Travertine Floor Tiles
On our return the first thing to check was to ensure the floor had dried out enough which is done using a damp meter and checking in a few different areas. The floor was bone dry so it was sealed using a number of coats to Tile Doctor Pro-Seal which is a water based impregnating sealer. The water acts as a carrier for the sealer allowing it to flow into the pores of the stone and prevent dirt from becoming ingrained there, that water evaporates as the floor dries and being water there is none of that usual smell you get with other solvent based products.
Source: Tile, Stone and Grout Maintenance in Leicestershire
Sealers do wear off over time, especially in the high traffic areas and kitchens are certainly one of those.