Limestone Floor Cleaning | How to actually clean it...The professional way.
We had to perform a very complex and challenging limestone floor cleaning job these days. The procedure, left us with an experience that we wanted to share in order for anyone who reads these lines to get an idea on how to clean, protect and generally speaking maintain a limestone floor.
Contents:
1. Limestone floor | Client’s initial requirements
2. Our assessment of the limestone floor
3. Preparation of the area
4. Limestone floor grout removal and change
5. Limestone floor grinding
6. Limestone floor powder polishing
7. Limestone floor cleaning
8. Final words on limestone cleaning
Client’s initial requirements
When we first got the limestone quote via email, it said:
“We have a limestone floor that needs some cleaning. Could you please have a look at it?”
We had to visually inspect it as usually the situation is way more complicated that it initially sounds like.
We went to the address and visually assessed the floor.
1st issue: the limestone floor didn’t just need a simple cleaning.
2nd issue: there we’re lots of corners and stairs and tight places.
3rd issue: the grout was old and giving the whole limestone floor a very dirty feel
The solution: this limestone floor needed some more complex action from our behalf.
Our assessment of the limestone floor
As said above, we needed to remove and replace the whole grout, grind the limestone floor to an even surface and make it shine, use some powder coating and make it more shiny and afterwards clean the whole floor with some special cleaning agents in order to make it look as new again.
Preparation of the area
1st thing’s 1st: how to get ready for a limestone floor cleaning and restoration process?
Well, you need to make sure that the area you will work on is delimitated using masking tape from the other areas that you don’t want to be involved in the process.
We’ve masked every single piece of skirting, step, furniture that we could find.
Afterwards we measured the whole limestone floor area in order to determine how much and many materials we would be using. Also, because there were steps involved, we needed to get the WaterFire machine from Klindex along for the job.
Limestone floor grout removal and change
One of the things that we forgot to mention above is the fact that these limestone floor tiles we’re held together by some cement grout.
We’ve manually removed it all and changed tit with a more flexible and durable epoxy grout. From start to finish, the whole grout removal and change operation took some good hours to complete.
In order to make the limestone stand out we’ve used Palegrino color for the new epoxy grout.
Note: if you are planning to remove and change the limestone grout yourself, please be sure that you document the whole procedure prior to actually starting the job as you could run the risk of breaking the limestone during this operation.
Limestone floor grinding
Since the new epoxy grout was in place, we could start grinding the whole floor and steps.
We used MS1 (Metallic diamond disc) to start the whole grinding process. After we used the MS1 disc, we’ve checked that the new epoxy grout wasn’t affected by the grinding and then proceeded with a harder diamond disc – MS2.
After these two steps we used different grits to get to the shine we were looking for by using resin diamond pads – 8 types and increasing grits. You can see for yourself the results of using this combination of metallic diamond discs and resin diamond discs.
and this:
Limestone floor powder polishing
Now that the limestone grinding process was done, we needed something to fully seal the stone surface and make it shine. In order to do that we’ve used a dedicated powder specially created for limestone surfaces. Unfortunately, we can disclose it’s name as it’s not available for the general public but if you intend on restoring you limestone floor please be sure to search for some powder to polish your surface in the end step.
Limestone floor cleaning
Needles to say that on this step we’ve used a special stone soap to fully clean the whole limestone surface. The special element is that this soap has natural wax in it and wax is responsible for a durable stone protection.
Now that the floor was Kristal clean, we could finally apply a dedicate water-based impregnator for super protection. The impregnator is called AVO and you can buy it from Lantania
Final words on limestone cleaning
We are very pleased with the end results and dazzled by the complexity of the job. Bellow there’s a video made of limestone pictures that we’re shoot throughout the whole process. If you need to get in touch with use, please click here.
Thank you in advance for sharing.
#StoneGuru #ForTheLoveOfStone #LimestoneCleaning #Klindex #London #Uk
Posted on: 18 February 2020