The clients had spent years cleaning, polishing and buffing 200 square metres of these floors to a point where the floor just had to many years of polish on it and due to the heavy foot traffic, it was starting to become unmanageable and always looking dirty. Tile & Stone Medics challenge was to strip all the years of floor polish and sealer from the various floors and then seal the floors using a resilient easy maintenance colour enhancing impregnating sealer. The clients were extremely diligent and required insurance certificates, risk assessments and method statements. The floors date back to 1830 and really needed some TLC.
This is how we did it:
Firstly we needed to strip years of acrylic and wax based sealers and polishes from all the floors. ‘Faber’ DEC 21 heavy duty floor stripper was mopped on to a section of the floor and left to dwell for five minutes, then using a scrubber rotary machine and a black stripping pad the area was agitated for approximately one minute. Once this process was complete the area was freshwater extracted to remove all slurry caused by the emulsified floor polish, dirt and the heavy duty floor cleaner. The floor was carefully rinsed to ensure the floor dried at a neutral Ph balance in preparation for sealing. This process was carried out across all of the relevant floors.
The process of stripping, cleaning and rinsing the Victorian Minton and Quarry tile floors took two days to complete. The floor was left for two days to dry as they had been subject to a lot of moisture due to the many layers of polish and waxes that had been applied over the years.
Day three was the day to seal the floors using ‘Faber’ DEEP PENETRATING enhancing impregnating seal. It seals deep in to the tile, but is also designed to enhance the colours of the tiles as if they were wet, but as a mat finish. A small amount of sealer was poured on to the floor and spread around over two square metres and left for ten minutes, after this time any excess is wiped off with a dry towel and then the area buffed over with a rotary machine and white pad. This process was carried out over all of the floors by two Tile & Stone Medics and took one day to complete. The sealer takes 6 hours to fully cure and will last for years to come.
The floor now was easy maintenance, no more polishing just simple wet cleaning with ‘Faber’ NEUTRAL CLEANER.
If you need your Victorian Minton Tiles or Quarry Tiles Stripped, Cleaned and Sealed, please contact us for a no obligation quotation.
