I recently had a call out to an apartment in the town of Windsor on the river Thames, just west of London. The enquiry was to see if I could do anything with Antalya Limestone bathroom tiles that were ingrained with mould.
Antalya Limestone is a Beige/Cream stone that is quarried in Turkey, its notorious for being a soft stone that is hard to maintain and probably not the best choice for a bathroom. Reluctant to replace the bathroom tiling the landlord was looking for another option as he knew something had to be done before putting it back on the market to find a new tenant.
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The homeowner had rented the property out for several years and unfortunately the most recent tenant hadn’t looked after the property particularly well. One of the problems was that the tenant had forgotten to inform the landlord that both bathroom extraction fans hadn’t been working for some time.
The apartment was located in the basement of the apartment complex, the bathrooms had no windows so without an extraction fan to remove moisture bacterial growth thrived. Having surveyed the bathroom tile I provide a quote to completely refresh the bathroom tiling which included deep cleaning and the removal of the ingrained mould.
Cleaning Antalya Limestone Bathroom Tiles
Tile Doctor has a range of products that can be used to clean and remove ingrained soils, old sealers, grout haze and other unwanted contaminations. For bathroom tiles I use Tile Doctor Duo Clean which is designed to remove mould from tile and grout. Before starting work though I carefully removed the glass shower screens and other fittings.
To ensure the product could penetrate deep into the tiles I first had to open the pores of the stone, I did this using a soft 200 grit milling pad fitted to a handheld buffing machine. After saturating the affected areas in Tile Doctor Duo Clean and allowing it to dwell for well over an hour, we could see it starting to work. Though effective it was clear this was going to take some time to completely remove the mould, so I saturated the stone again with Tile Doctor Duo Clean and left it to work overnight. Thankfully the property was empty.
Returning the next morning the results were incredible, about 80% of the mould had been removed but I knew if we repeated the process, we could achieve an even better result. I continued with the same method as before and left it to work overnight again. Happy with results I could continue with the next stage which was closing the pours of the stone by using a set of finer burnishing pads.
The pads I use have a 6-inch diameter and fit a handheld buffer machine, they are applied to the Limestone tiles in sequence and applied with water for lubrication. The sequence runs from coarse 400 to very fine 3000 and you rinse with water to remove the soiling in between each pad.
Sealing an Antalya Limestone Tiled Bathroom Wall
The stone was then left to dry out before returning to seal. The sealant chosen was Tile Doctor Colour Grow which as its name suggests enhances the natural colours in the stone allowing its beauty to stand out. Two generous coats of sealer were applied allowing an hour between coats.
With the tile and grout renovated all that was left to do was to re-fit the shower controls and shower glass after giving both a clean. The client was over the moon with the result, and his concerns over having to invest in a new shower room before letting the property out were gone.
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We often get work preparing properties before/after sale or rental, simply renovating floor tiles or refreshing the bathroom grout before putting it on the market can make a property much more appealing and add value.