It’s been my experience that it’s not un-common to discover fantastic tiled floors hidden underneath an additional layer of flooring usually carpet or linoleum. This was the case with this property, situated in the town of Canley, Coventry, where the owner had found a Quarry tiled floor underneath Vinyl tiles which had been stuck down using an adhesive. Quarry tiles are typically hard wearing and very durable and a sensible choice for flooring in high traffic areas of both residential and commercial properties, a tiled floor is of course a difficult to remove so it’s not surprising that tiles do get covered over rather than replaced during redecoration. Taste’s change and like most property owners who unearth hidden tiled floors, my client was keen to restore them as an original feature. Despite the amount of adhesive and the poor state of the Quarry tiles, I was confident that the floor could be restored to new, so we agreed a date for me to come back to the property and complete the work. The process of cleaning the Quarry tiled floor – including remove large amounts of adhesive – took a total of two days to complete. I started by carefully removing the Vinyl tiles using a hand scraper which as you can imagine was a lot of manual effort and the adhesive proved quite difficult to remove. In the end I had to use a combination of a very coarse 50 grit pad fitted to a heavy rotary machine lubricated with water, to clear the area completely of the substance. The resulting slurry was rinsed away, and the floor was then given a thorough acid rinse with Tile Doctor Grout Clean-Up. Grout Clean-Up is a cleaner which contains concentrated phosphoric acid, and is designed to dissolve minerals such as salts and cement left on the surface of the tile. This was followed by a final thorough rinse with water, and the excess moisture was soaked up with a wet-vac machine. After the cleaning process was complete, I left the floor to dry off completely for 24 hours. Upon my return to the house the next day, I checked for any dampness that could have damaged the performance of the sealer, thankfully, the floor was dry and ready to seal, and so I proceeded to apply several coats of Tile Doctor Seal & Go Extra. Seal & Go Extra is a fully breathable sealer that provides for effective moisture transmission. It provides durable surface protection against dirt and stains, and is suitable for most kinds of internal, natural stone tiled floors, including Quarry, Victorian and Flagstone. As you can see from the photographs the Quarry tiles came out really well and it’s hard to believe that this is the same floor. Mick Gayton Warwickshire Tile Doctor