Have you ever watched a dog turn in circles chasing its tail as he becomes frustrated with the chase. Stone cleaning is very much this vicious circle, full of misunderstanding and wrongful information that turns your stone from brilliant to dull. Round and round you go with improper and incorrect advice. Old cleaning habits offered you from your grandparents aren’t working. Remedies, like vinegar and bleach, while they may work in other areas do not work for stone. In addition, where you receive advice is critical. Not all stone professionals offer sound advice to stone care and we are here to give some clarity.
In our industry, there are professionals who pull the stone from the depths of earth, professionals who offer the back breaking job of fabrication, installers who install stone in your home and professionals like us who help in the maintenance and care of your stone. Many people in our industry in some manner touch the stone in your home before you really enjoy it; but there is only one trade who can offer you sound advice when it comes to cleaning problems to fixing mistakes that happen along the way. Sasso Bello studies these areas of stone maintenance so you don’t have to. In all, many professionals who play some part in the stone trades can offer you some basic pros and cons about maintenance, but it’s the care professionals, those who are specialized who can get you out of those old cleaning habits and into new ones. Sasso Bello has seen the problems, fixed them, and knows how to stop them from happening again.
Stone is very hard, a rock, tough in nature, durable and problem proof. In most instances you can’t cut stone with a knife, it’s heat resistant, holds up to the most intense abuses and is stain resistant. If this was at all true, we would be out of business. Not to mislead you, but some of the attributes I just described are true, but not for all stone. Here is where a specialist in stone care can help.
When you’re cleaning stone use less not more. For some reason, our culture has this tendency to fix problems with chemicals. With white clothes we use bleach to pull out stubborn stains and because this works, we pour it on our grout to remove stains too. Why? You wouldn’t pour bleach on a white shirt with a blue stripe would you? For this reason we don’t use bleach on our stone. There are better remedies. Grout near stone can damage (lose color) and the stain problems you had now grew into a more sever issue. Stay away from these types of fixes, stop using Windex to clean your shinny countertops and use more guaranteed solutions that will get you results. Remember less is more.
Guess what the number one solution to clean stone is, especially floors? What if we said it cost you nearly $0 and you already have one? Vacuuming is the best approach when cleaning stone, especially those floors. Floors seem to have the most concern, and it is floors that inherit the most soil. Grout carries most of this soil and is the toughest area on your floor to remove. Here are some helpful hints: First, make sure you have the right vacuum for the area you’re cleaning. They make vacuums for hard surface cleaning. Second, make sure that the vacuum doesn’t have any hard parts, especially metals, which can scratch your stone floor. Third, the more you vacuum the more you will be happy over a long period of time. Let us explain why this works.
The grout channel on your floor sit lower than the top of your stone and because most people like to mop their floors, they are pushing that soil from the top of the stone to this grout channel. This is where soil sit and is hardly removed. Vacuuming will remove most of the soil on the tile and grout channel. There is more to floor care and you can give us a call to go over them. It’s free to you.
There are many more areas of your home that need addressing when cleaning your stone. We hope this small amount of information with stone care helps. We want to help you stop running in circles and move in a direction that is best for your stones health. In many homes and businesses we have offered very encouraging stone cleaning techniques and advice. In addition, our advice comes with the tools and products to help you with those tough stone cleaning chores. We are giving you our best!
