grout haze Archives - South Essex Tile Doctor

Terracotta Tiled floor Restoration in Chingford

These photographs are from an old Terracotta tiled floor in Chingford, Essex that had been under carpet for years. The owners had removed carpet which had been glued to the tiles beneath and found this lovely floor which they wanted to restore as an original feature. As you can see it was in a bad state and needed some work on it.

Terracotta Tiles in Chingford Before Cleaning

Remove Grout Haze and Cleaning Terracotta Tiles

We started by giving the floor a deep clean with Tile Doctor Pro Clean which was left to dwell on the floor for ten minutes before working it into the floor using a scrubbing machine fitted with a black pad. I knew this wouldn’t resolve all the problems but it was a good start and would show what was going to be removed easily.

As expected there were a number of stubborn areas including the surface glue especially around the edges which needed to be tackled with a stronger product so the next step was to apply Tile Doctor Remove and Go which as the name suggests is a coatings remover that will remove almost anything and is safe to use on tiles. Hand scrapers were used along the edges of the floor and although the area was relatively small it took a long time to remove all the various contaminants.

Another issue we found was grout haze on the surface of the tile and for that we need to apply Tile Doctor Grout Clean-Up which was applied to the tile surface and scrubbed in with black scrubbing pads.

Terracotta Tiles in Chingford During Cleaining

Once satisfied the haze was removed we washed the floor down three times with water to remove any residue using a wet vacuum to pick up the slurry and suck any remaining liquids from the floor to allow it to dry quicker..

The floor turned out to be quite acceptable to customer who was happy with the results. They were going to seal the floor themselves once all the decorating had been completed.

Terracotta Tiles in Chingford After Cleaning

Restoring Terracotta tiled floor in Essex

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Grout Haze Removal from a new Quarry Tiled floor in Woodford, E18

These photographs are from a recently laid Quarry tiled floor in Woodford. East London where the tiler had smothered the tiles with grout and left it on the surface too long where it had then dried and he was unable to remove it. Unable to rectify the problem the Quarry tiles were then sealed, I suspect this was in an attempt to improve the look of the floor which unfortunately left it looking quite the opposite.

Remove Grout Haze and Cleaning Quarry Tiles

Undeterred by the state of the floor which we were confident could be put right we took the job on. The first step was to remove the sealer by using a strong dilution of Tile Doctor Pro-Clean mixed 3 parts water to 1 part Pro-Clean. This was left to dwell on the tile surface for ten minutes before scrubbing with black pads fitted to a rotary scrubbing machine.

Removing Grout Haze

Once we were happy the sealer had been removed we could tackle the Grout Haze with Tile Doctor Grout Clean-Up. It’s applied to the tile surface and again scrubbed in with black scrubbing pads. There was a lot of grout haze so the processes had to be repeated; all the edges were done on hands and knees with small doodle bug pads. Once the haze was removed we washed the floor three times with water to remove any residue.

The dirty solution was removed using a wet vacuum and the floor was rinsed three times to remove the residue and neutralise it, the floor was then left for 48 hours to allow it dry fully prior to sealing.

Sealing Quarry Tiles

When we returned we sealed the Quarry tiles using Tile Doctor Seal and Go which is recommended for sealing quarry tiles and give’s a nice low sheen effect. Five coats of sealer where needed in total which took some time to apply as you have to let the sealer dry before applying the next coat.

The result was a very satisfied customer.

grout haze