This article comes from a recently renovated house in the medieval cathedral city of Lichfield which is North of the new M6 Toll road. My customer had recently brought a house there and was refurbishing it from top to bottom, unfortunately however by the time the refurb was finished the new wood effect Porcelain tiled floor in the kitchen and hallway had become very dull & dirty.
Acid Washing Wood Effect Porcelain Tile
The tiled were basically dirty with plaster dust and I suspected grout smears to I decided the quickest and most effective method to clean them up would be to give the whole floor an acid wash with Tile Doctor Grout Clean-up.
Tile Doctor Grout Clean–Up is specially designed for removing excess grout as well as dealing with mineral salt problems so working in sections I applied the product to the floor and left to soak for five minutes before scrubbing into the tiles and then rinsing it off with cold water which was then removed with a wet vacuum. Some of the more stubborn areas had to be retreated and with a longer dwell time and more scrubbing but the process had the desired effect.
Once the whole floor was done I gave it a final rinse and used the wet vacuum to remove as much moisture from the floor as possible before leaving it to fully dry off overnight.
Sealing Wood Effect Porcelain Tile
There are a number of different types of Porcelain tile and most do not require a sealer however I had determined that this type was in fact the micro porous variety and would accept a sealer. If you’re having a new tiled floor laid it helps to keep some unused tiles back so you can test different sealers on them before applying the sealer to the actual floor. In this case three coats of Tile Doctor Seal and Go were applied and this worked very well as you can see from the photographs below.
The customer said it looked better than it did when it was first laid so was very happy.
Never use a steam cleaner for the regular cleaning of sealed floors as this will reduce the life of the sealer. For best results we recommend using a mop and two buckets, one containing a neutral PH cleaning fluid such as Tile Doctor Neutral Cleaner and the second where you rinse your mop afterwards, otherwise you will contaminate your cleaning fluid with dirt as you rinse.