Located in the hallway of an old vicarage in the historic town of Stratford upon Avon these Quarry tiles had been hidden under carpet for many years and before that it appears had been painted in red brick paint and splattered with plaster and paint from decorating. I was asked if there was anything we could do to restore them and having done a number of these types of renovations before I was confident that would could and got the go ahead to proceed.
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Restoring a Quarry tiled floor
The first job was to give the floor a really good deep clean and to remove any coatings from the tiles. To do this a strong dilution of Tile Doctor Remove and Go was left to soak into the floor for about 30 minutes before being scrubbed in using a slow speed rotary machine fitted with a scrubbing pad. I then used a wet vacuum to remove the resultant soiled solution and rinsed the floor down with water. There were quite a few stubborn areas and so the whole process had to be repeated, additionally some of the paint needed to carefully removed using a scraper.
Once the floor was clean I gave it a wash with Tile Doctor Grout Clean-up which is an acid based product that will remove light grout smears and mineral deposits from effloresce which can leave to white salt deposits appearing on the tile surface and can be quite common on old tiled floors that have no damp proof course.
The cleaning process took up the whole day and after finishing the whole floor was given a thorough rinse with water to ensure no trace of cleaning product remained on the floor.
Sealing a Quarry tiled floor
I left the floor overnight to dry then came back next day and used a damp test meter to verify the floor was dry and ready for sealing. Once happy I proceed to apply four coats of Tile Doctor Colour Grow which matched their requirements in a sealer exactly as it provides a matt finish brings out the colour in the stone and offers great stain protection.
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Source: Professional Tile, Stone and Grout maintenance service in Devon
To add a subtle shine to Quarry Tiles seal the tiles using Tile Doctor Seal and Go instead.