Restoration of a 16th Century Quarry Tile

We were contacted by a client who was keen in our no obligation home survey who wanted a quotation for restoring their Quarry Tiled floor. It was an interesting property which would probably be best described as a quirky old cottage dating back to the 16th century; it was probably built to house workers from the neighboring farm and the owner had decided to renovate the original quarry floor tiles which were in a bad way and effected by damp due to a lack of damp proof course and the tiles being laid straight onto a bed of peat. It's quite amazing when you think that these tiles had been laid over 400 years ago and were still serviceable.

Cleaning Antique Quarry Tiles

We started by steaming off all the old Sealers, Soil and Waxes that had been applied over the years, we then applied neat Tile Doctor Pro-Clean mixed 50/50 with Nano-Tech Ultra-Clean and left it seep in the floor for 20 minutes, the two products combined create a powerful cleaning agent which is still safe to use on tile and stone. The tiles were then scrubbed using a rotary machine fitted with a black pad to work the solution into the floor and then it was left to dwell for a further twenty minutes. The grimy solution was then removed using a wet vacuum which I can highly recommend for removing liquids from floors.

The next part was to use our Tile Spinneret tool which is fed from a heavy machine fitted into our Van. Often referred to as a truck mount system the tile spinner power rinses the floor with a high pressure warm water jet wash and at the same time sucks the soiled water back to a recovery tank in our van ready for disposal.

The client had to make a visit abroad at this time so we left the newly cleaned floor for six weeks to allow it to fully dry out before we came back to seal it.

Sealing Antique Quarry Tiles

After six weeks, we found a couple of areas were still showing a slight damp problem and so we dried the tiles concerned with heat guns to make sure it was bone dry. Now that the grime had been removed from the tiles we could also see that they had lost most of their color and so it was necessary to apply a specially formulated red tile coloring product over the whole floor which we left for an hour to seep in before using a polishing machine to make sure it was well ground in and evenly distributed across the surface of the quarry tiles. The next step was to seal the tiles to and for this we choose a product called Tile Doctor Seal and Go which I can highly recommended for sealing quarry tiles and it gives a nice low sheen effect. Six coats of sealer where needed in total which took some time to apply as you have to let the sealer dry before applying the next coat. Finally, it was time to buff the tiles to a nice shine using our polishing machine fitted with a Buffing Pad.

This restoration was a tough assignment and certainly took some time, but I think you will agree our efforts have made a significant improvement to the floor.