We just had our bathrooms redone and the floor is honed marble. I really would like them to be polished so I was wondering if there was anyway to have this done. We had a marble guy come to the house yesterday and he said that they were tumbled marble and because of that we would not be able to do it. Is there a sealer and cleaner that you would recommend for the floors the way they are now. Thanks for your help!

 

Dear Annie:

The marble guy is correct and incorrect at the same time. Let me explain:

If you're after the flat, uniform and perfectly square look of polished marble tiles, then one can't polish a tumble-finished floor: the corners and the edges of the tiles are rounded and chipped and you can't rectify that. However, if you can live with that, the surface of the stone can indeed be polished to a high gloss, either by just using a rather “hot” polishing powder (this would produce a gloss with little clarity), or honed first with diamond pads and then polished with the powder to get a clear shine.

If you decide to keep the floor the way it is now, you could get an improvement over the “pale” look of your tile by applying a good-quality stone color enhancer like MB-6. To understand what I mean, try to rub a slightly wet rag over a couple of tile: the color enhancer will give you permanently the same look that you see before the tiles will dry. In other words, you'd be getting the depth of color of a wet look without any shine.

For routine care, by logging into the Helpful Hints section of our website at: http://www.marblecleaning.org/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.marblecleaning.org/literature.htm.  

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Ciao and good luck,

Mauri z io Bertoli

 

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