Tile Plus, Inc.
Tips on sealing your tile & stone
This blog gives you a few tips on sealing your new tile and stone installation wherever it may be. It is recommended to seal your custom tile or stone job because the sealant helps to preserve a natural look or even enhance the current look while protecting from oil, grease, dirt and water. It is best to seal right after the stone has been grouted since you don't want dirt and oil penetrating the stone or grout joints and then sealing them in. When sealing a ceramic tile job your main focus would be the grout joints because the ceramic tile usually comes pre-sealed.
If you are going to seal an area where you expect oil and grease to frequently come in contact with the stone we recommend using a deeply penetrating sealer. When it comes to water and dirt, a general sealer should do the job. We recommend Miracle Sealants' 511 Porous Plus for oil and grease or their 511 Impregnator Sealer for water and dirt.
To apply sealer we first advise you to read the directions. We can give you general tips but you should always follow the manufacturer's directions.
First, make sure you have purchased enough sealer to cover the square footage you have installed. Then, have a few clean rags or some sort of cloth at hand that you can wet with the sealant. Next, wipe the stone with your sealer wetted cloth in circular movements to ensure your tile is evenly sealed. Generally sealers will penetrate very deeply so we don't recommend pouring the sealer onto the tile directly (especially enhanced sealers) as it may cause some areas to appear more dark than others because it has penetrateted one area much more thoroughly than another.
Never dilute your sealer with water unless instructed by the manufacterer. It may heavily affect the sealing properties rendering the sealer ineffective.
If you feel it appropriate to reapply the sealer to provide a stronger coating against water, dirt, etc. then make sure you let the sealer sit for 1-3 hours in this way you allow the first coating to cure.
The longevity of your sealer depends on the frequency of use upon the treated area. Some areas such as commercial floors may last only for a year while some residential floors may last for 10+ years!
When you reapply the sealer after it has pretty much worn off, make sure you first clean the area thoroughly with a substance such as diluted vinegar. Mix about 50% vinegar with 50% water and use a scrubbing brush soaked with the diluted vinegar to clean all of the joints and tiles. You need to wash the vinegar off with a sponge and clean water after you have cleaned the area with vinegar. Once it is dry you should be all set for the reapplication of sealer to the tile or stone.
That should cover much of the subject on sealing your freshly installed floors. If you want to first learn from visual experience how sealing is done and later do it yourself or if you just want us to do it you can give us a call and we will happily do it for you. Our contact information is below and is on the bottom of our web page at http://tileplus.net or by clicking the link below.
-The Tile Plus Team
1832 Stone Ave.
San Jose, CA
Office - (408) 938-3494
Fax - (408) 938 3493
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Alright, it's been a while since we've added any blogs so I felt it reasonable to make this one a bit lengthier than the rest. Feel inclined (okay, okay, maybe not inclined but something close to that) to post a comment and add a rating to this blog.
So, everybody seems to know of the downward spiral of the economy. Dangerous inflation and fear of losing property doesn't make one's life any easier.
You know what happens with businesses too, with less funds you can't support as many staff so you have to let a few (and maybe more) of them go. This appears to be the correct or only "solution" to "save" money but try to think of what will happen when this economy picks up again. Your company will have made a recession and shrunk to a fetal state thus production becomes very minimal.
By the way, the economy will pick up again, just look at the Great Depression of the early 20th Century. Things were horrible with people living in the streets but somehow we managed to pick ourselves up.
Here's what Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2009 had to say, "The Great Depression saw rapid declines in the production and sale of goods and a sudden, severe rise in unemployment. Businesses and banks closed their doors, people lost their jobs, homes, and savings, and many depended on charity to survive. In 1933, at the worst point in the depression, more than 15 million Americans—one-quarter of the nation’s workforce—were unemployed." "The stock market crash announced the beginning of the Great Depression, but the deep economic problems of the 1920s had already converged a few months earlier to start the downward spiral. The credit of a large portion of the nation’s consumers had been exhausted, and they were spending much of their current income to pay for past, rather than new, purchases."
Here's a funny point which I think applies to the current economic state, it is also from Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2009. "It is a common misconception that the stock market crash of October 1929 was the cause of the Great Depression. The two events were closely related, but both were the results of deep problems in the modern economy that were building up through the “prosperity decade” of the 1920s." Now, what I think is the deep problem we will have to save for another blog or two but I think you get the idea.
The solution is to actually promote. Don't ever reduce the money you spend on promotion. In fact, promote even more. Promote as if your life depends on it and I suppose one facet of it does. This is your way out of the "dangerous economy", promote and when all of the economic gibberish has blown away you will be tenfold stronger than the competition. An analogy is of a person's body when they are sick, when the body is ill, you don't want to reduce your intake of good proteins, healthy fats, vitamins and minerals to substitute that with junk food and candies. No, you want to eat as healthy as you can, sleep plenty and get something productive done. I don't know how many times I have felt sickly only to complete something that has been sitting around waiting to be done with the end result of myself feeling much, much better.
I wanted to share one last quote with you which I found paralleled my analogy on the body and a business. This is also from Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2009, "The crash affected the economy the way exposure to cold affects the human body, lowering the body’s resistance to infectious agents that are already present. The crash reduced the ability of the economy to fight off the underlying sicknesses of unevenly distributed wealth, agricultural depression, and banking problems." The encyclopedia doesn't go into how promoting is like carrying a portable heater around with you. :>
Signing off,
Tile Plus
Tile Plus' Homepage
"Great Depression in the United States," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2009
http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2009 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
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Our online marketing consultant recently shared a personal do-it-yourself story that we think you and your clients will appreciate. Roberto and his wife Sami decided to take on a master bath improvement project for their current home. They managed to pull off a beautiful improvement that looks like it could have been done by pros.
While Roberto and Sami did a great deal of work on their own, they had some trepidation about prepping their new shower for ceramic tile. "We did great deal of work on our own, including demolition, insulation, drywall, cabinetry install and the tile floor; but I really wanted to make sure that our tiled shower walls were water tight," said Roberto. They decided to bring in a professional for the shower wall prep, and were extremely pleased with the end result. Roberto and Sami are friends with a couple who did a master bath improvement that ended up with a tragic leak beneath their intricately stone tiled shower. Roberto took the advise of this same couple, and considered the help of a professional for this step in their bathroom tile. The professional tile installer was hired to prep the wall and install the tile for the shower walls. The grout work and curved curtain rod pictured here were left for Roberto and Sami to work on.
Hiring a professional, in this case, allowed the homeowners of this story to finish the job knowing that the shower was water tight. Find out how Tile Plus can help you begin or complete a complex tile project. Whether it's ensuring that shower walls are water tight, or that intricate section of your tile project turns out exactly as you envision it, you'll be happy that you chose Tile Plus to help out. Afterall, we are the place where tile becomes an art.
David
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With the ongoing news about economic hard times, we thought we'd take time to give you our pick for the best do -it-yourself sites. Anything to save a few bucks, right?
While we did consider site rankings based on visitor traffic, we also looked for sites that provide quality content, based on our own humble opinion. We also admit bias toward sites that discuss flooring and tile topics. Here's the list we came up with.
- Home and Garden Television HGTV
- BobVila.com
- About.com's Interior Decorating Site
- Ask The Builder
- Home Tips
- Old House Web
- The Natural Handyman
- eHow
- The Tile Doctor
- Lowe's How-to Library
There's a DIY site for just about anything, and fortunately home improvement categories are extemely poplular. If you're up to the task, one of these sites has the tips you need.
The Tile Plus team
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