Travertine Tile Cleaning Archives - Merseyside Tile Doctor

Travertine Tile Cleaning

Welcome to my Work History archive where you will find detailed examples of the cleaning and renovation of Travertine tiles carried out in North Wales

Travertine is a natural material that has unique features and colouring that no other stone can offer. The distinctive look of Travertine creates some of the most distinguished floor tiles and has proved very popular with commercial and residential use. It can be used for floor tile, kitchen flooring, bathroom walls and floors, and it is often used externally. There are many varieties such as Tumbled and Polished and like all natural stone it needs to be sealed to prevent dirt becoming trapped in the pores. Unlike other stones however Travertine does suffer from pitting however these holes can be filled.

One of the main issues with polished Travertine is the polish starts to wear down with use and eventually becomes dull. Another issue we see is acid etching where strong unsuitable cleaning products used on the stone etch the surface and ruin its appearance. To resolve both these problems the stone needs to be re-polished with diamond encrusted burnishing pads of different grits to hone the stone and bring back that deep shine. If this sounds familiar you should talk to us about our annual maintenance program where we visit you once a year to clean, polish and seal your floor thus keeping it in top condition.

Below you will find detailed examples of work we have carried out in the past, it should give you some idea of what’s involved and what can be achieved with the right techniques and products.

Travertine Tabletop Before and After Polishing Heswall

Polishing a Travertine Table Top in Heswall

Travertine Tile Cleaning, Work by Category, Work History / Andrew Robb

One of my customers for who I recently polished their Marble floor was over the moon with the results and wondered and if I could achieve the same effect with a Travertine table which had many scratches to the top. The table was at his house in Heswall which is located on the Wirral, on the Eastern side of the Dee Estuary with lovely views across the river towards North Wales.

Travertine Tabletop Before Polishing Heswall Wirral

The table was a lovely piece of stone furniture, but I could see it was badly marked, scratched and had lost much of its surface sheen. Whilst this was a slightly unusual request, the polishing process works equally well on any type of stone so apart from the physical issue of working on a raised surface, I couldn’t see a problem with working on the table and anticipated that it would come up quite well. We agreed a cost and I arranged a time to come back and complete the job.

Cleaning and Polishing a Travertine Table

When polishing floor tiles, I would normally use large Tile Doctor 17-inch diamond encrusted burnishing pads fitted to a rotary floor buffer, naturally that simply wouldn’t work on a table however, I do have a small hand-held buffing machine that’s perfect for getting into small spaces and polishing stone wall tiles which would be perfect for this situation.

To restore the polished finish on the table I was able to use the hand buffer together with a set of four 6-inch diamond encrusted burnishing pads of different grits from coarse to very fine. The process involves working through the pads in sequence. I started the polishing with the coarse 400-grit pad and a little water, this coarse pad removes the scratches and ingrained dirt. The table was rinsed down and then the 800-grit medium pad was applied which is the first step in the polishing process. Again, this pad is applied with water to lubricate and the table was rinsed down afterwards. The process was repeated with the 1500-grit fine pad and then the 3000-grit very fine pad to bring up a really nice shine to the Travertine table, I should mention the last pad is applied dry with only a tiny amount of water sprayed onto the surface.

Sealing a Travertine Table

The last step was to seal the stone to protect it going forward for which I used two coats of Tile Doctor Colour Grow. The sealer is rubbed into the top then the excess polished off after ten minutes. Once the sealer was dry the table surface was then buffed with a white pad to bring up the finish even further.

Travertine Tabletop After Polishing Heswall Wirral

The client was really pleased with the result, the table looked like new; he was so glad he had asked me to look at it following the work on his floors. Before leaving I talked to him about the best way to look after his table in the future and recommended for regular cleaning that he use Tile Doctor Stone Patina Spray which has been especially formulated for the regular cleaning of stone worktops.