The owner of this Victorian tiled bathroom floor in Horncastle had tried scrubbing and scraping these tiles will little to show for it, in the end after spending hours on this cold floor and trying lots of different products he was fed up and it still looked less than satisfactory. The tiles were very old and dirty and had remnants of glue stuck around the edges indicating they had previously been covered by something else such as lino, fortunately Victorian tiles are our bread and butter and we have managed to restore tiles in a much worse state than this.
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Cleaning Victorian Tiles
We set about cleaning the tile using Tile Doctor Remove and Go which is a strong coatings remover which is ideal for removing old sealers and adhesive products. It was left it to dwell on the floor for a while in order to give it chance to soak into the tile and get to work on the glue before being agitated using a rotary machine fitted with a black scrubbing pad. The soiled solution was then removed using a wet vacuum and the floor given a good rinse with clean water again using the wet vacuum to get the floor dry. This process tackled the glue but the tiles were still in need of a good clean so Tile Doctor Pro-Clean which is a strong alkaline cleaning product safe to use on tile and stone was applied; this was left to dwell and then scrubbed into the tiles to get a really deep clean, stiff brushes were used along the grout lines to get them clean as well and then the floor was given a thorough rinse to neutralise the tile and remove any trace of cleaning products.
Sealing Victorian Tiles
The next step was to seal the floor, however the tiles need to be dry before you can do this so we got our Turbo drying system out of the van, switched it on and it soon had the floor dry. Four coats of Tile Doctor Seal and Go were applied to the floor allowing twenty minutes to dry between coats; this particular sealer is recommended for Victorian tiles and does a great job of adding a nice sheen to the floor as well as adding stain protection.
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We managed to complete the work in a single day and the owner was absolutely delighted by the results.
Its interesting how fourty years ago the fashion was to cover up period features such as Victorian tiles and now the fashion is to put them back.