Terracotta Floor Renovated in the Wye Valley Holiday Home
The pictures below are of a Terracotta tiled floor that was laid in a Farmhouse in Symonds Yat around twenty years ago when the house was being renovated. The Terracotta tiles had been installed throughout the kitchen, utility and downstairs cloakroom and were well overdue a deep clean and seal.
Symonds Yat is a beautiful location amidst the fields of Wye Valley and set on the famous River Wye and is very popular with tourists. The farmhouse has been rented out as a holiday home for some time and with the floor looking faded and dull it was not giving the best impressions with visitors which is not good when you are using the property as a business.
I visited the property to survey the floor as the picture’s customers send you never show up all the problems. I could immediately see the tiles were indeed in need of some tender love and care, the old sealer had long since eroded away and now the Terracotta was susceptible to dirt becoming ingrained. I carried out a test clean on a small area so they could see what the result might look like. They were over the moon with the test area and amazed that how much it would bring the floor back to life. I quoted them a price which they were happy to accept, and we booked the job in for later in the month.
Cleaning/Repairing a Terracotta Tiled Farmhouse Floor
To put the life back into the floor it needed to be stripped of any remaining sealer, cleaned and then resealed. I began this process by spraying the floor with a medium dilution of
Tile Doctor Remove and Go and left it to soak into the tile and grout for ten minutes. This product is designed to strip off old sealers from tile which is important as you will find the sealer will be completely worn off in the busier parts of the floor but will still be present around the edges etc. If you don’t strip off the sealer and apply a new sealer on top you will find the result becomes inconsistent and leaves a patchy finish.
After ten minutes the Remove and Go was scrubbed into the Terracotta using a rotary floor machine fitted with a black scrubbing pad. This action removed what was left of the old sealer and after rinsing and extracting I was able to move onto the cleaning process.
This process was repeated using Tile Doctor Pro-Clean which is tile and grout cleaning product that will remove ingrained dirt. As before the product was diluted, applied to the floor and after leaving it to dwell for a short while it was scrubbed in as before. Some of the grout and corners had to be done by hand as the rotary machine can struggle to reach in places. After rinsing off with water and extracting with a wet vacuum there were a few stubborn areas that required a repeat treatment, but we soon had the floor looking clean.
Sealing a Terracotta Tiled Farmhouse Floor
After leaving the tile and grout to dry off overnight I came back the next day and checked the floor was dry with the moisture meter. The readings were fine, so I began applying the sealer. I started with a single coat of Tile Doctor Colour Grow which is a colour enhancing product that seeps into the pores of the Terracotta protecting it from within. This was followed with seven coats of Tile Doctor Seal and Go. Terracotta is very porous and does take a lot of sealer.
Once the sealer had dried the floor had a lovely satin finish that wasn’t too shiny. The client was over the moon with the restored floor and was keen for his next clients to see it.
Source: Terracotta Floor Tile Cleaning and Sealing Service in the Wye Valley