Travertine Tile Cleaning Archives - Northamptonshire Tile Doctor

Travertine Tiled Floor Orlingbury Before and After Maintenance

Travertine Tiled Floor Maintenance Visit in Orlingbury

At Tile Doctor, we have a long history of bringing tiles back to life – typically after they have experienced many, many years’ worth of neglect. If fact you can see photos on our many websites, that show the dramatic difference we can make.

Keeping a floor looking good once it’s been restored is the job of the sealer which will protect the tile from dirt becoming ingrained in its pores. However, sealers do wear off with use so in most cases we generally recommend you ask us to pop back every six to twelve months to give the floor a quick clean and top-up the sealer. We call this a Tile Doctor Maintenance Plan and it’s designed to ensure your tiles always look their best.

By way of example the photographs on this page are of a beautiful Travertine tiled floor, at a property in the Northamptonshire town of Orlingbury. The floor was originally laid around ten years ago and we were called in three years ago to perform a full restorative clean which took a couple of days to complete. The customer was amazed with the results achieved by the initial work and wanted to ensure it remained that way, so we worked out a maintenance plan for the customer and we pop back every year to do a maintenance clean and top-up the sealer.

Travertine Tiled Floor Orlingbury Before Maintenance

One of the advantages of the maintenance plan is that it can be paid for over the course of the year with monthly instalments, or as a one-off payment once the work is completed. The customer can choose either option.

The photos below show the same Travertine tiled floor after we had performed a maintenance clean for the third time. You won’t see a dramatic difference, just a floor that has retained its natural beauty all year round. This annual clean is far less disruptive than the original full restoration service and can normally be carried out over the course of a single day.

Maintenance Clean and Seal for Travertine Tiled Floor

The products and methods involved in the maintenance clean vary depending on the type of stone. To begin with, we vacuum the floor to remove any debris and then perform a light clean with a Tile Doctor product. This product is usually either Tile Doctor Neutral Tile Cleaner or Stone Soap depending on if the floor is polished stone.

Neutral Tile Cleaner is a pH neutral cleaner that is specially formulated for regular cleaning and ensures your sealed surface remains undamaged. Stone Soap is a similar product for light duty cleaning but with an additive that help build patina.

If we are restoring polished stone, such as Travertine, Marble or Limestone, we proceed to perform a light polish of the tiles using a very fine 3,000 grit Tile Doctor diamond encrusted burnishing pad fitted to a floor polishing machine.

Travertine Tiled Floor Orlingbury After Maintenance

To finish, the floor is dried quickly using a series of fans and one coat of a Tile Doctor sealant is applied to top up the sealant that was originally applied during the restoration clean. In this situation, we applied Tile Doctor Colour Grow, which is an impregnating, colour-intensifying sealant that dries with a matte finish.

Again, you won’t see a dramatic difference in the pictures above, the idea is to maintain the original finish which given time will degrade as the sealer wears off.

Northamptonshire Tile Doctor Maintenance Plan Information

Travertine Tiled Floor Maintenance Visit in Orlingbury Read More »

Tumbled Travertine Kitchen Tiles Rejuvenated in Lower Boddington

Some of the world’s best-known Travertine quarries are found in Italy. In fact, the curved columns of the Vatican City are made from Travertine. But the stone is popularly used for flooring in many other countries, including the UK. It’s a form of Limestone which is quite soft and porous, but has unique aesthetic characteristics, including natural pits and voids.

The natural process of corrosion, known as pitting, makes it so that without the right maintenance and adequate sealer, Travertine is very difficult to clean. The small holes that form in the stone can quickly become ingrained with dirt and other muck. Making things worse, many modern cleaning products are not suitable for use on Travertine: they are acidic and over time will cause further corrosion to occur.

Recently, I was called to a property in the quaint Northamptonshire village of Lower Boddington to rejuvenate a tumbled Travertine tiled kitchen floor. The house was a very busy one, with children and dogs running around. Needless to the say the tiles were looking worse for well and were in desperate of restoration, including cleaning, polishing and sealing to brighten the appearance of the floor and protect it from everyday stains and foot traffic.

Tumbled Travertine Kitchen floor Before Cleaning in Lower Boddington

Cleaning and Polishing Tumbled Travertine Kitchen Tiles

The first thing I needed to do was to remove the plinths from the kitchen units and cover the base units and appliances with a protective film to prevent them from encountering the cleaning products.

Next, I began the process we know as burnishing, which involves the application of diamond encrusted burnishing pads to the tiles to resurface and polish them. In the Tile Doctor system, there are four such pads, each possessing a different level of grit. These pads are fitted to a rotary scrubbing machine and then applied sequentially, starting with the Coarse pad, before moving through to the Medium, Fine, and Very Fine.

A small amount of water is used as lubrication with each pad and I stopped in this case between the application of each pad to soak up any excess moisture using a wet vacuum. The result after completing the burnishing process is a very refined and high-quality polished finish.

After burnishing the tiles, I followed by cleaning the grout lines carefully using a combination of handheld brushes and Tile Doctor Pro Clean, which is an alkaline-based tile and grout cleaner.

Sealing Tumbled Travertine Kitchen Tiles

I left to the floor to dry out completely overnight and would return the following day to carry out a final polish of the tiles and to seal the stone. I did this using two coats of Tile Doctor Ultra-Seal, which is a natural-look, impregnating sealer designed to provide maximum protection. You can see the fantastic results in the photos below.

Tumbled Travertine Kitchen floor After Cleaning in Lower Boddington

Before leaving my very happy customer to the enjoy, I left her with customer with a complimentary bottle of Tile Doctor Stone Soap, a neutral and highly reliable cleaner for natural stone floors such as Travertine. This will assist her in maintaining the appearance and condition of the tiles going forward. Another satisfied customer!

Travertine Tile Cleaning