We were asked by a client in Southport for advice regarding their Black Starlight Quartz tiled kitchen floor. Over the years it had lost its appearance and they wanted to know if anything could be done to return the deep shine the tiles had when they were installed.
Quartz tiles are not the most practical choice for the floor of a busy kitchen, but these sparkly starlight tiles certainly add the bling. In this case the deep sparkly shine added by the factory during manufacture had worn down with use and now looked almost cloudy.
Like Terrazzo, Quartz tiles are a composite tile engineered from a mixture of resin, sand, quartz, and crushed mirror pieces. The Quartz makes it very durable and tiles with high ratios of Quartz are very hard wearing although as in this case will benefit from a polish from time to time.
I paid the client a visit to survey the floor and work out the best process for restoring the appearance of the floor. I was confident the work could be done in a day and quoted accordingly. Happy with the price we agreed a date for my return.
Cleaning Starlight Quartz Floor Tile and Grout
The first job was to wash down the floor with a mild solution of Tile Doctor Pro-Clean to remove all the different products the client had used on the tiles to keep them clean. After ten minutes the solution was worked into the tiles with a floor buffer fitted with a black pad.
Buffing pads can struggle to reach into recesses of the grout line so I like to clean them manually with more Pro-Clean and a handheld scrubbing brush. The combination of the Pro Clean and scrubbing action releases the dirt making the solution turn into a dark slurry that is rinsed with water and extracted with a wet vacuum. The floor is then inspected, and the process repeated where necessary and afterwards two floor driers were placed on the floor to speed up the drying time.
Polishing and Sealing a Starlight Quartz Tiled Kitchen Floor
The Quartz tiled floor was then dry burnished using a standard speed buffing machine fitted with a Tile Doctor 3000-grit burnishing pad and a little water sprayed onto the tile. This process slowly builds back the polish on the tile.
Then once the deep shine had been restored to the Quartz tiles the floor was sealed with two coats of Tile Doctor Ultra-Seal impregnating sealer, the sealer is absorbed into the microscopic pores and will protect the tiles and grout going forward. The excess sealer was wiped off and then I ran over the floor with a White buffing pad to tighten up the seal and to further improve the finish on the tiles until it was like a mirror.
Before leaving I advised the client that they needed to be careful what they used to clean their floor with going forward, some supermarket products are simply too strong and will strip the protective seal off a tile. For this floor I recommended Tile Doctor Stone Soap which is designed for cleaning highly polished floors and helps to maintain the patina.
They were delighted with the newly polished floor it really returned the wow factor back to the kitchen.
Source: Starlight Quartz Tile Cleaning and Polishing Service in Merseyside
