Travertine Honing, Polishing, Refinishing and Repair | Toronto ON
Achieving The Look You Want
Travertine is a unique and versatile stone. It can look rugged and rustic with a welcoming old world charm or stunning with high-polished elegance. Regardless of your travertine style, it can become dirty or dull-looking, scratched, etched, cracked, chipped, or otherwise damaged with time and use. If this is true of your travertine, don’t replace it! 360 Floor Care can restore your travertine, not just making it look better, but making it look brand new again.
To Fill Or Not To Fill
Travertine in its original state has naturally occurring holes throughout. Part of travertine’s unique appeal is that it is available in two distinct forms — filled and unfilled.
In “filled” travertine, a color-matched material is used at the factory to fill the holes, giving the stone a smooth finish. In “unfilled” travertine the natural holes remain exposed for a rustic, earthy finish. Both filled and unfilled travertine are beautiful in their own right, and both offer their own particular look and feel.
Filling Holes In Travertine: Floating
If you have unfilled travertine, or the holes in your filled travertine have become exposed, and you want the holes to be filled, we can perform this service for you.
“Floating” travertine is the process used to either change unfilled travertine surfaces to the smooth appearance of filled travertine or to repair filled travertine surfaces with holes have become exposed due to time and wear.
For repairs, we use filler tinted to match the rest of the surface, blending the repair site with the surrounding area, then honing and polishing to achieve a uniform finish. Changing a completely unfilled surface to a filled one is basically the same process, but offers a broader array of design choices, since you are not limited to a color that matches an existing filler.
Honing, Polishing, and Refinishing Travertine
360 Floor Care can hone your travertine surfaces to eliminate surface imperfections such as dull spots, scratches, etching and other wear and tear, resulting in a damage free surface that looks like new again. With the damage erased, our expert technicians can polish your travertine using the appropriate diamonds or polishing powders, achieving a honed (soft matte) finish that is warm, inviting, and velvety smooth, a gorgeous glass-like polish, or something in between that suits your taste.
Refinishing is similar to floating, in that you can restore a finish that is uneven or has become dulled by wear, scratches or other surface damage, or alter the finish entirely if you’re looking for a change of pace. 360 Floor Care is well versed in the types of finishes possible, as well as experienced in the techniques required to achieve them.
Travertine Grinding / Lippage Removal
Whether you want a floor that is flush with its grout lines for easier cleaning, or need to remedy uneven tiles that can be hazardous as well as unattractive, 360 Floor Care can take care of that for you. Using state-of-the art diamond grinding technology, we can remove excess stone to create a flat, level surface. Once the uneven tiles are leveled (this is called lippage removal), the travertine is honed and polished to your desired finish.
Deep Cleaning Soiled Travertine
While any travertine surface can become dirty and grimy with use, unfilled travertine with its naturally varying surface texture and inherent holes can be particularly challenging once dirt has had time to accumulate in the hollows and low points. Our deep cleaning processes remove deeply imbedded soiling, strip away years of buildup of unsightly topical treatments, remove soap film in showers, get rid of soot on fireplaces, and resolve a host of other travertine cleaning problems, leaving your stone so pristine that some people might think it was just installed.
Once your travertine floors, showers, tub surrounds, walls, and other travertine surfaces are restored, we highly recommend you have us seal your travertine to help inhibit staining. Like all natural stone, travertine is naturally porous and quick to absorb staining agents. Although most stains can be resolved, who wants to go to all that trouble, expense and frustration when it can easily be avoided? A thorough professional sealing is a good, inexpensive way to head stains off at the pass.
Stain Removal
Speaking of stains, sometimes, in spite of your best efforts, stains happen. Whether you’re looking for DIY advice or want to hand the mess off to us, we’re happy to tell you that most stains and discolorations can be resolved.
Travertine Color Enhancing
Travertine is characterized by its neutral earthtone colors. For certain types of travertine, we can apply an enhancing sealer to intensify the color and enrich its natural beauty.
Travertine Repairs and Tile Replacement
Before you replace your chipped, cracked or otherwise damaged travertine, talk to us about our expert travertine repair services. 360 Floor Care can fill holes and fix travertine cracks and chips. Sometimes we encounter a tile damaged beyond repair. We can replace your tile, using extra care to avoid damaging neighboring tiles, and then level the replacement tile with its neighbors. With all our repairs, we match the surrounding finish as closely as possible.
NOTE — unless you have extra tiles on hand from the original batch, replacement tiles may be noticeably different. Because travertine is a natural stone, even tiles from the same quarry and with the same designation can vary in color and appearance as time passes and the quarry line shifts.
