Hi John,
 
Thank you for the response.  I did speak with Dr. Fred and we tried a series of things.  The installers had so much caked on the stone, one couldn't really tell the original color.  We are thinking it might have been a chemical reaction with the color enhancer the installer used.  However, Alex went into the pantry area and tried color sealer and it seems to work nicely.  I am complety stumped as to why this occured.  It is only a 1 year old floor, nobody has lived in the house and when Alex was working on the floor, I the master assistant (lol) stayed behind him with the vaccuum to make sure the water and slurry were cleaned up right away.  We only used a neutral cleaner/water mix to clean.  We did use 400 grit honing powder with a hogs hair pad and a light mist sprayer with water.  It was after the 400 grit honing powder that I noticed the black lines.  But then again, there was grout haze still left on the floor until we gave it a good cleaning with the neutral.
 
We did take a photo of the edges where it shows the contrast of the natural color of the stone and the orange the installer created.  Also, I took a photo of the granite top polishing Alex did.  I think it turned out beautiful.  This house if full of stone and it is so pretty but nobody bothered to seal anything.

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 8:14 AM, John Freitag <jfreitag@thestoneandtileschool.com> wrote:

Georgia,

 

Sorry I didn’t get a chance to call you back last evening, my cell died ( too much use yesterday.

 

The black , was this apparent at all when you started the job?

 

From the pictures it almost looks like a black mold along the grout line. Have you tried cleaning with Bleach ? it could be that simple, if it’s some type of mold.

 

Is it possible to send another picture with more of a close  up shoot.

 

Have you tried taking a hand grout saw a scrap the dark area? if so did you remove the dark areas?

 

If you can reply to these questions this morning a can give you some additional suggestions later today, I have a 9:00 AM appointment and should be back in my office by around 10:30 AM and will call  you and follow up on you r reply.

John E. Freitag

President/Director

The Stone and Tile School

Office 407-567-7652

Cell 407-615-0134

jfreitag@thestoneandtileschool.com

 

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www.thestoneandtileschool.com

 

 

 

From: rivera.gm@gmail.com [mailto:rivera.gm@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Georgia Rivera
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2009 7:41 PM
To: Restoration and Maintenance
Subject: [sccpartners] Travertine Help

 

I am on a job site right now working on a travertine project.  The installer had used sanded grout, then applied a color enhancer without getting all the haze off, then used an acid based cleaner to try to remove the haze and then sealed it with an impregnator...great, huh?  Well the travertine turned an orange (ish) color.  We removed the sanded grout, filled with an un-sanded grout, removed the lippage, grouted again, honed to 250 grit, grouted again, used a 400 grit honing powder and have been cleaning up.  We got rid of the orange color and returned the stone to its original color.



I noticed these black marks on the edges of most of the grout lines.  They are not gaps in the grout, they are black marks.  I have no clue where they came from.  What would you suggest I use to remove the marks?

Thanks All

Georgia Rivera
Stone Buff