This Polished Limestone floor had been laid in the communal hallway of a block of flats in Aston Clinton and as you can see from the photograph below the stone had become ingrained with dirt over time and was now overdue for a deep clean and polish. Apologies for sounding like a dentist and also the photographs as the lighting wasn’t brilliant in the corridor.
Cleaning Limestone Tile and Grout
Due to the heavy soling of the stone and grout lines we started by applying a strong dilution of Tile Doctor Pro-Clean which is an alkaline cleaning product that’s safe to use on Stone and Grout. The solution was scrubbed into the floor using a commercial rotary machine fitted with a fitted poly brush; once the cleaning solution had become dirty the floor was rinsed with water and the process re-applied until the stone and grout were clean.
Polishing Limestone Floor Tile
Our next task was to re-build the polish on the stone using a set of Tile Doctor Diamond encrusted burnishing pads which are applied to the tile in sequence from Coarse to fine further cleaning and polishing the stone until its returned to its original condition. The pads come in a set of four and you start with the coarse pad together with a little water. This this cuts through and removes surface grime, dirt and any remaining sealer. The floor is then rinsed and you move on through the remaining pads until the polish has been restored to the tiles. This process took up much of the first day so the floor was given a final rinse and left to dry overnight.
Sealing Limestone Tiles
On the second day we returned to find the tiles had dried and we started to seal the Limestone using three coats of Tile Doctor Colour Grow which is a colour intensifying sealer that soaks into the pores of the stone bringing out the natural colours whilst providing that all important lasting protection.
Polished Limestone looks fantastic but would not be my choice for a high traffic hallway, those tiles will need regular polishing if they are to keep their appearance.
Hi Rupert, in fact that’s exactly what happened, the client insisted upon a highly polished finish and appreciated this would be difficult to maintain so took out a Tile Doctor maintenance contract.