Wednesday 23 March 2016

Creating A Beautiful Finish On A Limestone Floor

The article Creating A Beautiful Finish On A Limestone Floor is courtesy of Abbey Floor Care Service

Limestone is a beautiful flooring and comes in a variety of colours and finishes. This floor was a grey limestone that had been laid a number of years ago. Over the years the floor had gradually lost its original finish and there were a number of issues that the homeowner was concerned about.   limestone floor before restoration They were concerned that: • the floor had started to lose its finish and look dull and patchy in places • there were spots and etch marks around the worktops • there were some deep scratches • there was pronounced lippage - up to 3mm in places • there were areas where the grout was coming away • this meant it was becoming more difficult to keep clean • the customer was also looking for an improvement in the appearance of the floor. We suggested the customer have the floor ground smooth, then honed and polished to give it a completely new smooth honed finish that would be extremely easy to keep clean and significantly improve the appearance of the floor. We described the change in finish as going from a poor standard definition appearance to a high quality high definition appearance. On the first day we started by installing our protection to the adjoining walls, kitchen furniture and floors. protect adjoining surfaces We need to install protective film because uneven tiles can cause splits as the machine first rides over the uneven surface. This protective film protects the surfaces from any splashes caused by the restoration. As a "light tack" product it will not damage wallpaper, paint or kitchen unit finishes. We were now ready for grinding using metal bond diamonds on our heavy duty planetary grinding machine. This process removed all the lippage from the floor, revealing a totally new smooth surface. limestone showing lippage being removed This image shows the floor part way through grinding, the floor is still uneven. The grinding leaves a rough "open" surface and the next step is to "close" the stone and make the surface smooth. This is called honing. On day two we used the same machine to hone the floor using 50 grit, 100 grit, 200 grit, 400 grit to an 800 grit resin bond diamond disks. The floor was then lightly polished with polishing powder. In between each stage of honing and polishing the floor was thoroughly rinsed clean with our clean and capture pressurised rinsing system to remove the slurry and any spend diamonds and polishing powder The floor was left to dry and we applied two coats of impregnating sealer to the whole floor to help protect it against spots and spills. To finish off we filled areas of lost grout with epoxy grout. epoxy-limestone-floor-grout This grout is extremely tough and hard wearing, so it will stay in place for the life of the floor. It can can take a couple of days to fully cure, so we covered it with light tack protective film to prevent uncured epoxy being spread across the floor.   beautiful limestone floor after being polished

As you can see the floor now looks polished and beautiful.

If you haver a limestone floor that you would like to restore to a new beautiful finish, please call 0800 695 0180, or click here, for your free or charge quotation.

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