photos please

Real travertine is like hardwood. It can be sanded, polished and resealed. It is CHEAPER to have the floors refinished than it is to rip them out and do it again.

A stone company (any company that installs and polishes stone) can deal with this for you. It sounds like your cleaning attempts are now past the point of no return. A full sand/polish/seal is a great way to get a brand new stone floor. And it is roughly the same as a wood sand/refinish (wood floors average $5/sf). This is why stone is SO sought after. They can be refinished dozens of times.

How do you think the Vatican can keep their floors looking so amazing?

Thank you so much for your time. Yes, I guess I need to go to the Vatican and check it out. ;-) My problem is I live in a town of twelve thousand people and have limited talented stonemasons. I was hoping I could tackle it since it's just a couple of areas. In my imagination, I saw a car buffer and a type of polish.

As I thought. There are two things going on here:

1. Traffic is wearing down the sealant on the travertine (it needs it or it acts like a sponge)

2. Traffic is wearing down the POLISHED SURFACE of the stone (that is sitting underneath the finish)

How to tell which is which? A sealed travertine floor should make a drop of water 'bead' on top...just like the finish of a brand new car. Any water should bead up and run right off.

The sealed portions should still allow the water to bead. The worn down 'unsealed' sections should absorb the water like sand in a desert. It should get sucked right in.

So take a drop of water and place it on the worn out spots and see what happens. And then compare that to the 'glossy' sections.

That's how you can tell your floor needs resealing. Technically a resealing can be a DIY event...but you need to know how to remove the old stuff (sanding/grinding) and then clean it off and let it dry. Then you need to use a patch compound to fill in all the holes travertine loves to create (it can be like Swiss cheese!) and THEN you seal it.

Just for fun, those sealants can have some serious chemicals in them. It takes a good deal of knowledge to work with them safely. Once they dry they are fine...it's the liquid format that makes them dangerous.

Also remember that travertine is stone, so it will never look like tile with a hard, polished finish. We get so used to seeing polished tile floors that the natural stone look doesn't quite seem right. However, it is a high quality product, and with a moderate level of care it will keep its looks for many years.

We used a floor buffer and some polish/sealer on a brand new travertine floor right after it was installed. It looked good and kept a sheen for several years. You should be able to bring yours back to life.

Bruce