Call a janitorial maintenance company that handles commercial accounts. But start investigating replacement. You won't like cleaning that even if it’s in perfect shape.

Brick floors are a complete hassle to wash, rinse and dry quickly before the water pools in the mortar lines, even when they are sealed. I would get rid of all the brick pronto. If you love it, have it professionally stripped and resealed, then get a specialty machine with brushes that also vacuums the dirty water up. It needs to be a heftier machine than the Hoover Floormate.

I think to spend money to clean and refurbish would not be a good use of your money. My friend’s home has these brick floors and she has mentioned all the problems described above. But my friend also complains how loud they are to walk on. And they’re not comfortable to walk in barefoot. She is ripping them out and replacing with wood everywhere. It will be $$$, but she expects to stay in the house till her kids graduate from college, and her kids are currently in grade school, so she feels it will be worth it.

I vote to rip them out, especially since they have cat urine in them, which will never go away.

Alixstpe, what did you use -- machine wise -- to accomplish this? It looks like you added grout or something to level it all out.

Your dog is adorable!

Before and almost after!

Did you paint the cabs yourself? looks great... almost done!

Lisa, we had to strip the floors first which was a pain! We eventually found lacquer thinner did trick after trying several other products. Once stripped down to the brick tile we used grout to even it out and give it a aged brick floor look. After the grout dried we went over it with a sander to smooth is out (and to add character) and applied a semi gloss sealer. We were nervous but it looks better then we could have imagined!

@Rawketgrl, yes! We used cabinet paint from the local hardware store they hold up! So far so good!

Nice job reworking those floors!

@Rawketgrl and thank you, she’s spoiled rotten

Excellent job refinishing and working with what you have!

Nice job on the floor alixstpe! Is your floor actually real brick (with sealer on top) or is it a tile (made to look like brick) with the sealer? I have the same large area with tile (not real bricks) and the color drives me crazy.

I hsve the same flooring issue as you did .. the old sealant has failed snd needs yo be stripped and resealed grout needs to me lighted too i am not on houz, but if you can reach out to me with suggestionsrations, i tried Orange based stripper in a section and it made a sticky horrible mess i can be teached on FB Karen Aebli

what a beautiful job you’ve done!👍