Tumbled Travertine Sealing before or after Grout?

Hi Maurizio- Great website! I am about to have someone install my tumbled beige travetine on my shower walls. Although I know you are not keen on sealing the travertine, I really like the porous look of my travertine and don't want the grout to fill in those porous holes. What do you recommend? At the same time I want to protect my bathroom from water damage and water seepage through those pores. Thanks. Hien.

 

Dear Hien:

If you want to call those holes pores… Ti saluto!! :-)

First off, no sealer for stone will ever do the first thing to seal those cavities: sealers for stone are so thin that only fill porous, and to see a porous in stone you need a potent microscope!

Bottom line, no matter how much you love those holes, inside a showers stall, on the grounds of probable sanitary issues, you have to fill them.

What you could do is fill them with clear caulking material, one by one, before installing them. In that way you will have your holes properly filled, yet still visible.

Other than that…

And remember, it's never too early to think about the proper maintenance of your stone. The issue of what you'll be doing day in and day out to your stone is – as it should be intuitive – vastly more important than its sealing (if and when possible and/or advisable) and it's all too often neglected. As you can tell by reading many of this site's postings, you're not likely to get good information about routine care from your dealer or installer. Don't become another statistic! By logging into the Helpful Hints section of our website at:   http://www.mbstone.com/HH_promo/helpful_hints.htm , you will be able to get the short version of our maintenance guidelines at no charge. The full version of it – a 7-page document considered by many as an industry benchmark – is available in pay-per-download format in our Educational Literature section at:   http://www.mbstone.com/literature/literature.htm .  

And remember, every single penny of the cost of the literature will be used to support this site and its cause: your cause.

While you are in the “Helpful Hints” section, do spend some time reading all of the interesting FREE articles you'll find in there!

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Thank you  

Ciao and good luck,

Mauri z io Bertoli

 

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