Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Cleaned and Sealed Italian Riven Slate Tiled Floor

This Italian Riven Slate tiled floor set up in the dining room of a house in Boston, Lincolnshire was in dire need of a good clean and re-seal. This clip allows you to see large areas where the surface has faded and become soiled which was probably due to the sealer wearing off allowing dirt to settle in the riven surface of the slate.

Cleansing Italian Riven Slate floor tiles

We set about scrubbing the floor with a rotary machine fitted with a black scrubbing pad along with a dilution of Tile Doctor Pro-Clean which is an effective Tile and Grout cleaner especially recommend for stone floors due to its alkaline formula. It's also quite good at stripping sealers from floors but it wasn't too much of a problem on this floor.


The next process was to get into the grout lines with stiff brushes in order to give the grout a good scrub, this step has to be done by hand as the scrubbing pads can struggle to reach the grout. The next step was to remove the soiled cleaning solution with a wet vacuum and wash the floor down with clean water to remove any remaining cleaning product and neutralize the floor before the next step of sealing.

Sealing Italian Riven Slate floor tiles

Once the floor was dry we came back to seal it using two coats of Tile Doctor Color Grow which really does help to bring out the natural colors in the slate and will protect the tile and grout from stains going forward.

The job took two days in total and the client was absolutely delighted with the improvement in the floor.