victorian tiles

Victorian Tiles at Salford Town hall after

Restoring Victorian Tiles at the Salford Town Hall

This original Victorian Tiled floor was uncovered at the Grade 2 listed Salford Town Hall in Salford, Manchester. This public building which built around 1827 was the former Salford Town Hall and Magistrates Court; it’s currently being turned in to luxury apartments and this amazing floor is located in the main entrance hall. The floor was only recently re-discovered during the conversion works after being hidden for many years and was in surprisingly good condition. The company remodelling the building are maintaining the historic features so we got the call to go in and clean and seal the floor.

Victorian Tiles at Salford Town hall before

Cleaning Victorian Tiles

Cleaning the floor was fairly straight forward and involved the application of a dilution of Tile Doctor Pro-Clean which was left to dwell on the tile for around ten minutes before being worked into the Tile and Grout using a rotary machine fitted with a black pad. The dirty solution was removed using a wet vacuum and the whole floor rinsed down three times to ensure there was no trace of cleaner left on the floor. It’s a large tiled area so it took the whole day to complete.

Sealing Victorian Tiles

I returned the next day to see that the floor had dried off overnight and so started to seal it using Tile Doctor Seal & Go which is a topical sealer that adds a nice shine to the tiles, five coats of sealer were needed before the tiles were fully sealed. I think you would agree the floor now looks fantastic; certainly the client was happy with the finish.

Victorian Tiles at Salford Town hall after

 
 

Cleaning a large Victorian tiled floor in Salford

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Outward Bound Victorian Floor after

Victorian Tiled Floor Restoration at Buxton Outward Bound Centre

Derby University have a 58 acre outward bound centre in Buxton at the centre of the famous peak district. The manor which was previously a hotel is the hub of centre and caters for numerous outdoor pursuits including climbing, underground caving and canoeing; as you can imagine the floors in manor house get a fair amount of wear as students come and go in their boots and rucksacks. All this takes its toll and I was asked to restore a marvelous old Victorian tiled floor at the manor house.

Cleaning the Victorian Tiled Floor

The Victorian tiled floor was looking tired; any sealer that may have been applied previously had long since worn off. There were a few cracked and broken tiles which needed replacing and fortunately you can still source these tiles and so once this was done I set about cleaning the floor. To clean I used Tile Doctor Pro-Clean which is an alkaline product in conjunction with a buffing machine fitted with a black scrubbing pad; once the floor was clean I washed it down with clean water to remove any remaining chemical before sealing. I can recommend the use of a wet vacuum at this point as it makes the job of removing liquids from floors much faster.

Outward-Bound-victorian-Floor-before

Sealing the Victorian Tiled Floor

One the floor was dry I started the sealing process or applying five coats of Tile Doctor Seal and Go, this can take a while as it’s necessary to allow each coat to dry before applying the next. The sealer added a nice sheen to the floor and will provide protection to the Victorian tiles going forward; you can see the difference in the photographs.

Outward-Bound-Victorian-Floor-after

 
 

Tiled Victorian floor restoration in Buxton for Derby University

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Victorian Floor After Cleaning and Sealing

Victorian Tiled Hallway Renovated in Ashton Under Lyne

This Victorian Tiled Entrance Hall was an original feature of a house in Ashton under Lyne which is a town in the wider Greater Manchester area; naturally an entrance hall is a high traffic area and subject to a fair amount of wear so it was in need of a deep clean and re-seal.

Victorian-Floor-Before-Cleaning

Cleaning the Victorian Tiled Floor

The Victorian Tiled tiles were fairly dirty so we mixed Tile Doctor Pro-Clean 50/50 with NanoTech Ultra-Clean and then diluted it with water; the two products together form a very powerful cleaner as you get the cleaning power of Pro-Clean combined with the tiny abrasive particles found in Ultra-Clean. The resulting mixture was worked into the floor using a buffing machine fitted with a black scrubbing pad. Once the floor was clean and I was happy with the results it was rinsed with clean water to remove any trace of cleaner and neutralise the floor prior to sealing. We used a wet vacuum to remove the water from the floor and left the floor to dry overnight.

Sealing Victorian Floor Tiles

The next day the floor was dry so we set about applying the sealer. For Victorian Tiled floors I recommend the use of Tile Doctor Seal and Go, its ideal for Victorian Tiled and as well as providing good stain protection its adds a nice low sheen to the floor. To fully seal this floor we needed four coats of Seal and Go before which does take time as it’s necessary to allow each coat to dry before applying the next.

Victorian-Floor-After-Cleaning-and-Sealing

 
 

Cleaning and Sealing Victorian Tiled Floor Tiles in Greater Manchester

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Victorian floor tiles After cleaning and sealing

Victorian Floor Tile Cleaning

Details below of a Victoria floor tile renovation we did recently in the hallway of a house in Heaton Mersey, which is an old suburb of Stockport. The floor was an original feature in the house being laid sometime in the eighteen hundreds, some sealer was left on the floor to offer protection but most had been worn down and the floor was suffering from the impact of ground in dirt from recent building works.

Cleaning the Victorian Floor

The floor was cleaned using Tile Doctor Pro-Clean and a black buffing pad to loosen the soil that had built up on the floor. The floor was then neutralised to remove any remaining cleaning solution by rinsing it three times with water and then left to dry.

Victorian-floor-tiles-before-cleaning

Sealing the Victorian Floor

Once dry the floor was sealed with 5 coats of Tile Doctor Seal and Go which is ideal for sealing Victorian tiled floors as it brings out the colours in the tile whilst providing stain protection and allowing moisture vapour to breathe through.

Victorian-floor-tiles-After-cleaning-and-sealing

The owner Mr Mitchell was very pleased with my work and left a great testimonial which is copied below.

“Steve has done an excellent job of cleaning up a very dirty old Victorian floor. The job was not without its problems, but Steve dealt with them very professionally, taking responsibility for issues with third parties that he had little control over. He has also done an excellent job of cleaning our carpets.”
 
 

Cleaning and Sealing a Victorian floor in Heaton Mersey, Stockport

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