Restoring an Old Brick Floor in Oxford

We were contacted by a customer living in Oxford who had a property with a brick floor in the living room that was in a bad state and in need of restoration. Brick has always been used as an alternative flooring material to stone due its durability and low cost. Oxford has a long history dating back over a thousand years so it not unusual to discover something like this in older properties. The owner believed the floor to be over 100 years old and had been patched up in numerous places in the past with holes filled in with modern bricks and concrete. I was confident we could dramatically improve the floor but naturally give its long history it would never look like it was new again.

Restoring a Brick Floor

To remove the dirt I stated with the application of a strong dilution of Tile Doctor Pro Clean, a high alkaline product that is our go to cleaning product. I applied the product to the floor and left it to dwell for twenty minutes before scrubbing into the brick with a black scrubbing pad fitted to a low speed rotary machine. The soiled cleaning solution was then extracted using a wet vacuum and the floor rinsed with water. With a lot of the dirt removed I could see I would need to use something abrasive to remove the layers of concrete and give the floor a consistent appearance. Fortunately we a number of techniques we can use for dealing with these issues and in this case I opted to apply a series of coarse abrasive milling pads. I started with the 50grit grit pad which is applied by attaching it to a weighted floor buffer and lubricated with water. Then the floor is rinsed and the process repeated with a 100 grit pad and finally a 200 grit pad to finish the process. The pads use industrial diamonds to slowly grind down the surface and improve its appearance. After the final rinse I could see the floor was much improved, I then had to wait for the floor to dry off fully before I could seal it.

Sealing a Brick Floor

On my return the next day I checked the floor with a damp meter to make sure it had dried. All was well so I set about applying a sealer to protect the floor from staining going forward and also make it easier to clean. This sealer I opted for was Tile Doctor Colour Grow which protects the brick from within by become ingrained into the pores of the material and has the added benefit of enhancing the natural colour to bring back the redness of the brick in the process.


I appreciate the photographs are not my best but hopefully you can appreciate the improvement, certainly the customer was very pleased with transformation and left the feedback for me below. In fact they were originally of the opinion that it probably wasn’t salvageable so this was a major bonus. We went from dirty old brick living room floor to shiny new (looking) floor in the space of two days. Barry called back immediately came round to have a look the same day then set a date and time and met every promise.


Source: Brick Tile Cleaning and Restoration Service in Oxford

Unique Brick Kitchen Floor Restored in Wrestlingworth

This brick floor, installed in the Kitchen of a property in in the town of Wrestlingworth was one of our toughest assignments so far; the floor was made from handmade Norfolk bricks which were laid approximately 20 years ago but had been subject to grease, general dirt and still had cement from the grouting present on top. Although this wasn't your typical tiled floor I knew we could achieve some fantastic results with the brick by using the right products and techniques. Cleaning a Read more...

Unique Brick Kitchen Floor Restored in Wrestlingworth

This brick floor, installed in the Kitchen of a property in in the town of Wrestlingworth was one of our toughest assignments so far; the floor was made from handmade Norfolk bricks which were laid approximately 20 years ago but had been subject to grease, general dirt and still had cement from the grouting present on top. Although this wasn't your typical tiled floor I knew we could achieve some fantastic results with the brick by using the right products and techniques. Cleaning a Read more...

Deep Cleaning Brick Floor tiles

This brick floor, installed in the Kitchen of a property in in the town of Wrestlingworth was one of our toughest assignments so far; the floor was made from handmade Norfolk bricks which were laid approximately 20 years ago but had been subject to grease, general dirt and still had cement from the grouting present on top.


Although this wasn’t your typical tiled floor I knew we could achieve some fantastic results with the brick by using the right products and techniques.

Cleaning a Handmade Brick Floor

My first instinct was to use Tile Doctor Pro Clean, a high alkaline product, to clean the bricks since it is highly versatile. It cleans most types of natural stone tile very effectively, and so I believed it would also work well on brick. I applied the product to the floor and left it to dwell for twenty minutes before scrubbing into the brick with a black scrubbing pad fitted to a low speed rotary machine. As I anticipated this was successful in cleaning a large area of the floors, but a very greasy area by the range cooker and a lot of cement in thick patches remained. To resolve these problems I opted to cover the greasy area with Tile Doctor NanoTech HBU (Heavy Build-Up Remover) and left it for at least twenty minutes. This allowed the nano-sized cleaning particles to penetrate into the grease stains and dissolve them from within: something everyday cleaners can't do. I then used another black scrubbing pad to fully remove the stains from the floor and the area thoroughly with clean water. The improved the appearance of the floor a lot, but as a final step I went over the entire area using a steamer, along with more HBU Nanotech and handheld scrappers to manually remove stubborn marks and bits of paint. Dealing with the cement residue proved particularly difficult as some areas were an inch thick. To deal with these I used Tile Doctor Acid Gel - a blend of hydrochloric and phosphorus acids in gel form - to break them down as much as I could, before using scrappers to finally remove large clumps of cement.

Sealing a Handmade Brick a Floor

After rinsing and extracting excess moisture from the floor I left it to dry for 10 days. Upon my return some areas of the floor were still too wet to seal even with continuous drying equipment in place. The floor needed to be fully dry in order to sealed, since moisture can negatively affect the sealer's performance, so I spent time drying those areas with a heat gun. Once satisfied that the floor was dried I sealed it using Tile Doctor Colour Grow. This is an impregnating sealer that I would typically use on unsealed porous stone such as Sandstone and Limestone since it is designed to penetrate into the pores of the stone to act as a barrier against ingrained dirt and stains. I decided that Colour Grow was the best fit for the brick, especially since it contains colour intensifying properties that would really accentuate the natural reddish and orange shades.


As you can see from the photographs this certainly did the trick, and the customer was very pleased with the new revitalised appearance of her floor. While brick wasn't the easiest stone to work with - nor one that I normally encounter - I think you will agree we achieved an impressive transformation.  


Source: Brick Tile Cleaning and Restoration Service in Bedfordshire