As you may know already, Tile Doctor aren’t limited to the maintenance and restoration of tiled floors. Our expertise covers all different types of tile and stone cleaning, meaning we are even able to clean and restore stone fireplaces. A good example of this is a polished Marble fireplace I recently restored in Bedford, which is the county town of one of England’s smallest counties, Bedfordshire. Marble is reputed in the international market for its premium quality, toughness, and durability, making it a great choice for a fireplace – if you can keep it properly maintained!
The following pictures show the state of the fireplace before the restoration. As you can see, the stone was stained and discoloured, possibly from smoke damage as it had previously been used as an open fire. My task was to get the Marble back to looking its best again through a combination of polishing and sealing. Here’s how I did it.
Cleaning a Stained and Discoloured Marble Fireplace
The process I took to restore the fireplace is much the same as the one I would for tiled floor polishing except on a smaller scale and with smaller tools. Cleaning a vertical surface can be trickier and make a bit more of a mess with possible splashes, so I fully sheeted up the area, covering the customer’s furniture and newly decorated walls.
It involved the application of six inch diamond encrusted polishing pads of varying grits, fitted to a handheld machine, as well as handheld diamond encrusted blocks to get into all small, difficult to reach areas. Just like with tiled floor polishing, I started with a Coarse grit pad to grind away the tough stains and then worked my way through the system of different grades of pads until finishing with a very fine pad to refine the polished finish.
Sealing a Marble Fireplace
Once the fireplace had been polished to a high standard, I sealed the stone using Tile Doctor Ultra Seal, which is a premium, no-sheen, natural-look, solvent-based penetrating sealer formulated to provide maximum stain protection. It’s perfect for high-end natural stone like Marble, it can also be used on Granite, Slate, Travertine, and Limestone to achieve a high shine finish and protect the stone.
By the time, I had finished it was starting to get dark, so unfortunately the photo below, which shows the result, does not show off the quality of the shine that I was able to achieve on the Marble. Nevertheless, the customer was very happy with the results.
Tile Doctor have the products, equipment and experience to tackle all sorts of problems including stone restoration, removing Limescale, repairing cracked tiles and grout and even stain removal with products such as Tile Doctor Reduxa which can lift Red Wine stains out of natural stone.