The photos below are of a Polished Porcelain tiled floor at a house in the new Telford Lawley Village development. When the house was built my customer had specified large format White glazed Porcelain floor tiles on the ground floor and had insisted on the use of a matching white Epoxy Grout. The developer agreed to lay the tiles but refused to use Epoxy Grout (which is very resilient but also tricky to work with). As a result, the customer hired someone else to grout the floor.
Epoxy Grout is notoriously difficult to work with and unfortunately the tiler was unable to remove all the grout residue from the surface of the Porcelain tiles and ruining their appearance. The tiler tried to remove the grout residue but ended up discolouring all the skirting boards instead. The customer was out of time at this point and had to move in, but the floor looked a right mess as is clearly visible on the before pictures on this page. Having given up on the tiler they decided to call Tile Doctor.
Fortunately for the customer we are very familiar with this issue and have been resolving problems like this for some time. After discussing the problem on the phone, I paid the customer a visit to take a close look at the problem and after running a few tests I was confident I could fix it for them. We agreed a price and I arranged a time to return to complete the work.
Cleaning a Polished Porcelain Tiled Hallway Floor
To break down the polymers in the epoxy grout I first applied Tile Doctor Remove and Go which was left for approximately fifteen minutes before agitating it with a black scrubbing pad fitted to a rotary floor machine. This process removed most of the grout haze but to get it looking 100% I swapped the black pad to a 3000-grit diamond burnishing pad and polished the tiles using a little water sprayed onto the tile. This is a very fine polishing pad and brings up the finish on the Porcelain tiles a treat.
Once that was done, I inspected the floor again looking for stubborn areas and then spot treated those areas by hand with a repeat of the same process and a scraper. The tiles were factory sealed so once I was happy all the grout haze was gone the job was finished.
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For aftercare and keep the floor looking pristine I recommended they use Tile Doctor Neutral Tile Cleaner. It’s easy to use and comes in concentrated form so you only need a small amount, it has a nice fresh smell. They could use household cleaners, but they are likely to leave a residue and leave smears on the polished surface
The client was very happy that I saved the floor for her, it now looked how she had imagined it and was in keeping with the rest of the stunning new house. She left the following testimonial for me, which is always a delight. They now just needed to clean up the skirting boards, which may need a rub down and a lick of paint.
“Very professional manner. Excellent job. I am more than pleased. Edith K.”
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