Limestone Tile Cleaning and Polishing

This is a Honed Cream Jura Limestone floor in the Kitchen of a property in the village of South Kilworth outside of Lutterworth. Our customer asked us to renovate the floor and resolve a couple of issues they were having.

The grout was the main area of concern, some parts had failed and needed replacing and the rest just needed cleaning. There were scratches on some of the Limestone tiles that also needed attention. The stone itself was in good condition but as it hadn’t been professionally cleaned and sealed for seven years it was overdue a refresh.

Renovating Grout on a Jura Limestone Floor

Work started with cleaning the grout lines which was done by manually scrubbing in a 1:4 dilution of Tile Doctor Pro-Clean with a stiff brush. This product is a very effective alkaline tile and grout cleaner product that releases the dirt ingrained into the cementous surface of the grout. When we were happy with the result the soiled cleaning solution was removed with a wet vacuum and the floor washed with clean water.

The next step was to sort out the cracked and heavily stained grout by raking it out with a special tool and then replacing. I also dealt with several structural movement cracks in the limestone tiles at this point by filling with a colour matching stone resin filler.

Removing Scratches from Honed Jura Limestone Tiles

Attention then turned to removing the light scratches and etching with an abrasive 200-grit diamond pad. This pad is applied using a weighted rotary floor machine that can grind, hone & polish natural stone. It’s applied with water for lubrication which turns into a creamy slurry that is rinsed off with water and then extracted with a wet vacuum.

With the scratches removed the tiles were then burnished with a 400-grit pad to create a satin low light reflection finish across the whole floor. As before the resulting slurry was removed with a thorough rinsing and wet vacuuming.

Sealing Cream Jura Limestone Floor Tiles

After the floor had dried the stone and grout was sealed using Tile Doctor Ultra-Seal, several coats were applied until the stone had reaches its saturation point. We chose Ultra-Seal for this floor as its almost invisible and doesn’t darken the colour of the stone at all, which is exactly that natural look finish the customer wanted.

Although it’s probably difficult to appreciate the improvement to the floor from these pictures my customer was certainly happy. In fact, they mentioned that it had never looked as good as it does now.

We recommend re-sealing every five years as sealers will eventually wear down, especially in high traffic areas. We do however offer an annual maintenance clean & top up sealer treatment which is ideal for maintaining the appearance of highly polished natural stone floors.

This particular sealer is an impregnator that soaks into the pores of the stone, thereby preventing dirt from becoming ingrained there. This will protect from liquid-based surface spills & soil penetration ensuring dirt remains on the surface where it can be easily cleaned away.

On the subject of cleaning, I left a bottle of Tile Doctors pH Neutral Stone Soap with the customer. This product is designed for the cleaning of sealed stone floors and will help maintain the integrity of the sealer whilst building a slight patina on the stone. It’s important to use the correct maintenance cleaner as stronger products will weaken the sealer and if correctly used the sealer may last up to five years