Articles & Tips
The following articles were written by the Nu Life Stone Care principal, unless otherwise noted. These offer helpful tips on how to avoid problems caused by improper installation and maintenance techniques on stone and marble. These articles can be of great benefit to homeowners, building contractors, and designers, who want to avoid costly mistakes and the need for expensive stone restoration services.
| Sanded or Un-sanded, the Correct Grout For Stone | It is alarming to see how many dimensional stone floors here in Australia have been grouted with the wrong type of grout. This appears to be the standard, caused by poor education and product mis-labeling. This is a very important issue, please read on… |
| Maintenance Tips | Simple maintenance tips for homeowners and property managers with marble and limestone surfaces. Guidelines for what to do, and more importantly, what NOT to do which may damage your stone or marble floors. |
| Reinstalling Loose Tiles | Hollow floor tiles can be a common problem, especially with porous materials, such as travertine, limestone, and quartzite surfaces. This article will discuss solutions to save floors which have loose and hollow sounding tiles or stones. Published in Stone World Magazine. |
| Grout After | Many large stone floors must be done in phases, complete with grout as to not slow down the construction cycle and allow the builder to continue with other trades. This is a short article suggesting a technique for installers to make a new stone floor look brand new and seamless. |
| How to Prevent Formation of Mineral Stains on Grout. | Mineral stains on stone floors can be a real problem. The cleaners which will remove mineral residues will also damage most stone surfaces. So it is best to prevent the stains from occurring in the first place. This article will provide tips to do so. |
| Stain Removal Guide | Removing stains from stone surfaces can be professionally done, or you can DIY. This stain removal chart is provided to help you remove stains from natural stone surfaces using household cleaning products. |
| Don't Wax those Ceramic Floors! | Why do building maintenance contractors apply acrylic coatings to ceramic floor surfaces? It is a mystery as to intent when considering that most ceramic surfaces are more durable and wear resistant than the coating will ever be. The following article shows how we do it, what I like to call the “right way” for ceramic and porcelain maintenance. |
| Responsible Marble | This article was written to help architects and designers correctly specify materials for stone floors, based on what the requirements will be for maintenance. Then, some stone materials can be substituted, to keep the desired color scheme but simplify maintenance tremendously. From what I have seen in the stone restoration workplace, education in this area is desperately needed. |